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Meta and Google are cutting staff

wsj.com

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Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#261

Post by singron »

game_the0ry wrote: post #60
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The hiring market has shifted from ultra-competitive during the COVID economic boom to being much tighter and more competitive during this economic downturn. You can't hire at Meta and Google scale without collecting some mis-hires and poor performers. When the hiring market is tight you might keep them on longer and try to mentor them up to par, but when the hiring market shifts and there are a lot of great can…

> This is more like cycling out hires that didn't work AND some collateral employees who unfortunately got lumped into those teams and cancelled projects I see - if they are cycling out the lower performers and hire recently laid off people on the market for a bargain, then that kind of makes sense, assuming they are not in a hiring freeze.

If they are laying off their poor performers so they can hire the laid-off from other companies, wouldn't they just be trading lemons?

The strategy probably works regardless of macro economic conditions assuming you let go of "lemons" at a greater rate than you hire them, but it seems easier when the market isn't being flooded. You could maybe argue that layoffs at other companies are reducing the proportion of lemons, but it's not clear to me.

I think reducing headcount gives an immediate outlook of lower expenses without affecting revenue in the medium term. Tons of employees at these companies aren't working on projects that will have monetary significance within several years if ever.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#262

Post by water-your-self »

ras3022 wrote: post #151
baby wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the future is uncertain much less uncertain than any other companies IMO. They're printing money.

Today sure. But remember you have to boil the frog slowly lest it jump away.

They've pretty much thrown the frog straight into the boiling pot havent they?

In april they held a private concer featuring lizzo, then in july tell employees to increase productivity.

From lizzo to layoffs in two months.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#263

Post by water-your-self »

Jensson wrote: post #53
game_the0ry wrote: post #15

I can't read WSJ while at work, but after checking on the financials for both Meta and Alphabet, I do not understand why either would be cutting staff. Both look pretty strong, so I am not sure how cuts are justified or why Zuckerberg has a negative outlook, especially since 2021 was such a great year for both. Do American executives, investors, and start up owners not have the guts for even a moderate stock price dr…

Maybe Meta and Alphabet has gotten to the point where they don't need more people? The return from adding another guy optimizing ads isn't that high when you already have 10 000 people doing it. Google has 3x more people today than when I worked there, and those people are working on the same products as back then. There must be some point which it no longer makes sense to hire more people.

Ah yes, that one manager and their 10,000 direct reports.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#264

Post by water-your-self »

kube-system wrote: post #231
alchemooly wrote: post #211

I've noticed news articles saying that Meta have been cutting back on support staff, like cleaners and custodial roles. To me, these are the wrong people to be cutting. The people who clean Meta are not the reason why Meta is hemorrhaging money. I'm sure they actually do their jobs very well. They should fire the people who are actually causing the problems. Everyone stopped using facebook because they are uncomforta…

Remember that their users are not their customers. User experience at either of those businesses is only relevant as much as it is useful in attracting advertisers to the platform. Your butcher isn't too concerned about whether the chickens like the decor in their cage.

Chickens arent at liberty to choose their butcher, typically.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#265

Post by mgraczyk »

mc32 wrote: post #260
mgraczyk wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really newspeak. The difference is that you're still getting paid in between and still have a job, pretty different from getting laid off where you often don't get paid and don't have a job.

But it's still "prove you're still worth it". Instead of, we have the following teams with openings, please pick one you want to go to. No, it's, we have openings in the following teams, prove that one of them want you enough.

Yeah sure but it's definitely different from being laid off. You can just look at the numbers. The vast majority of people end up on a new team and do not leave the company.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#266

Post by water-your-self »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #246
alchemooly wrote: post #211

I've noticed news articles saying that Meta have been cutting back on support staff, like cleaners and custodial roles. To me, these are the wrong people to be cutting. The people who clean Meta are not the reason why Meta is hemorrhaging money. I'm sure they actually do their jobs very well. They should fire the people who are actually causing the problems. Everyone stopped using facebook because they are uncomforta…

> Apple: it's intentionally slowing working products This is really disingenuous. They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot. Not exactly what I would call “intentionally slowing working products” but rather “reducing CPU power consumption to mitigate abrupt reboots to keep a reliable user experience”. Granted, Apple was a bi…

> They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot

Only after they have made it impossibly expensive to replace some lithium.

This is an incredibly disingenuous defense of their actions. Apple is fully trying to tie hardware refreshes to the cadence of should be battery refreshes and the frog has been so boiled that android devices realized it was more profitable to follow suit.

Apple is incredibly shady and there simply isnt a defense here.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#267

Post by ynx »

battery_glasses wrote: post #247
curiousllama wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I know this process got rid of at least 1 engineer in the past few months. No egregious mistakes, just general underperformance.

It gets rid of plenty of performing/overperforming engineers too because it is exhausting.

Yep.

I saved my team a couple of times over but pissed off a manager in the process. My performance review had multiple contradictions praising me and admonishing me for the same things (being a good mentor but not spending any time onboarding new team members, etc). I left rather than deal with the gaslighting that was all but certain to ramp up.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#268

Post by seadan83 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #236
musicale wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that they seem to think that software developer performance can be measured meaningfully and accurately in a standard way across teams.

So should they hand out promotions and fire people based on randomness? Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? What's the better solution?

Difficulty of project/task seemingly is a big factor. The engineer working in a legacy code base is likely to be less productive due to technical constraints.

How to grade that into any kind of ranking, in a standard way, is seemingly not likely given how subjective the difficulty of a code base is. This also completely elides the clever and best engineers that find ways to simplify and/or avoid solving problems entirely. Further, a team that built a crap pile of bad code, but know it pretty well could seem really productive just because they have built for themselves some job security. Then compound all this with measuring the utility of what was produced.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#269

Post by selfmodruntime »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #5
tempsy wrote: post #2

This will be the trend among most tech companies. Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount. Most companies will likely not reduce pay if they can help it to maintain competitiveness, but if you’re a bottom or middle performer or on a non-revenue generating team suddenly your job security even at “safe” companies like Google is at risk.

Personally, being laid off sounds pretty good right about now. Paid vacation before going back into a hot job market for a full remote job.

No idea what you‘re on about. I‘ve just been let go from a large fortune 100 company (contract expired) and its been tough so far.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#270

Post by cletus »

battery_glasses wrote: post #58
o10449366 wrote: post #29

The article highlights that the easiest way for these companies to let go of staff right now is to dissolve entire teams. I've heard from friends that work at these companies that recent hiring freezes have actually made managers more hesitant to fire low performers because anyone they fire can't be replaced and they'd rather have a low performer than no one at all. The team dissolving process seems to sidestep this…

At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your manager, but rather the manager submits your review to a calibrating board that tries to ensure fairness and maintain quality standards. They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking but you are absolutely graded on the curve of the other engineers in your department and level.

It's worse than that.

Not only is it graded on a curve but to prevent ratings inflation there are quotas for each ratings bucket. Many deny this, even when presented with concrete proof that such quotas exist (but were called "performance targets"). This itself would be fine except that negative ratings have a target percentage of ~10%. This includes regrettable losses and ratings below Meets All Expectations.

Such targets are enforced at a reasonably high level, typically at director or higher over an org of 100-150+ employees.

Why is that bad? Because it creates a hugely toxic environment. Why? Because such directors and VPs will demand their managers find sufficient "low" performers to meet their targets.

The other aspect to this is that all of these ratings are essentially bullshit anyway. Why? Because it's a popularity contest. If your manager and director likes you, you'll pretty much always get a good rating. If they don't, you won't. The exact same set of facts can be used to argue ratings pretty much +/- 1 bucket, possibly more.

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