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Meta and Google are cutting staff

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Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#321

Post by bleah1000 »

dymk wrote: post #117
baby wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are a way to get rid of low performers without legal issues.

Thats what a PIP is for. Layoffs are for firing a lot of people at once. Doesn’t have to be due to performance.

PIPs require a tremendous amount of effort and work. It also doesn't guarantee that the person would be fired. There are many times where the employee might do just enough to get off the PIP, but still be a really low performer.

It also sucks for the employee, a PIP is really stressful not knowing what will happen next, will you get fired, should you start looking for a new job.

In addition, the PIP can take months to get to the finish. Maybe even six months in some cases.

A layoff takes way less time, but it does suck for the employee. I don't know which is worse. But if you have a good employer, you still might be able to transfer to another part of the company. Being on a PIP usually means your only choice is looking outside the company for a new job.

Layoffs always hit good and low performers, there is no way it can't. But if a company wants to get rid of a number of low performers at the same time, PIPs are not the way to go.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#322

Post by sulam »

top_post wrote: post #238
astrange wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be very valuable because it means you don't lose your unvested RSUs. Plus internal teams are more likely to already know you, or at least it's easier to show them your work, so the interview isn't necessarily that hard.

This is still lapping up the bullshit of what it actually is. It's a redundancy plain and simple, your job is being terminated, it should be reported as such.

You literally still have a job. Being reported as a layoff would be lying. If you don’t have a job and have to find work elsewhere then that would be the layoff. As long as the company is still paying you the at worst you’re on the bench.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#323

Post by russiasux »

cletus wrote: post #270
battery_glasses wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It's one thing to be crazy enough to think implementing a system like this will help a team of humans cooperate more efficiently, it is a completely different thing to expect the exact OPPOSITE type of tornado cash style bot obfuscation to be OK for the actual customers buying ads.

Sure you can buy ad$... but are you prepared to buy the 30% fake impressions to fake people we require?

The fact that both systems / strategies were developed by the same group of people is for sure the "why" behind these cuts.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#324

Post by throw-8462682 »

Meta kind of screwed everybody here. I am at one of the hyperscalers with some insight into SDE offers. Second half of 2021 things got extremely crazy with Meta offering ridiculous salaries even for junior positions. This caused a chain reaction. Other FAANG had to increase their offers outside the normal bands to fill positions, which caused experienced folks to leave where out of frustration that new hires one level down were making more money than them. Now it appears Meta overshot and are trying to clean up their own mess.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#326

Post by okdood64 »

throw-8462682 wrote: post #324

Meta kind of screwed everybody here. I am at one of the hyperscalers with some insight into SDE offers. Second half of 2021 things got extremely crazy with Meta offering ridiculous salaries even for junior positions. This caused a chain reaction. Other FAANG had to increase their offers outside the normal bands to fill positions, which caused experienced folks to leave where out of frustration that new hires one leve…

> hyperscalers

What is this?

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#327

Post by fn-mote »

dustingetz wrote: post #290
evgen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having endured several such calibration sessions at FB/Meta I can also assure you that we are not even talking about 'large' numbers before there is a strong expectation that the ranking totals within an org will meet the predicted curve when it comes to the percentage at exceeds, meets, and meets most. I distinctly remember wasting more than 15 minutes of my life arguing with a skip level manager that someone who ha…

as a manager what do you say there to the report

Polish your resume, the guillotine is coming and there's nothing I can do to save you.

I tried for you, remember me when your next job is hiring managers.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#328

Post by xracy »

water-your-self wrote: post #280
xracy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount. Are you saying that because stock prices are dropping that the market has reacted to excessive headcount? Cause I think a better explanation for that, is that in the past 2 years we've had inflation, and that was reflected in the profits of the companies for 2020-21, and now that the fed is loweri…

Yeah but overfitting is still a better strategy, for a number of reasons. Match your competition. Equity grants on the uphill, reduce them on the downhill. What if the market goes up and stays up? Fed does or doesnt hike rates? Do you really want to play hiring catch up when everyone else has a 2 year head start? Also, your board of directors doesn't give a shit about the reason, they only care what is being done in…

I disagree that overfitting is a better strategy. Because if you recognize why things are happening are unrelated to profit/work at the moment you can accept that you're going to have losses regardless, and try and plan past that in the long term. Which should lead to better profits when you're not entirely dependent on the federal reserve.

In particular, hiring benefits don't take effect immediately, it's going to be a while before productivity is realized from the new hires. So it is very short-sighted to freeze that before an economic downturn, when you want new forms of revenue and innovation to allow you to outlast the competition and grow a business into something that will become the "next big thing".

Also, as a commentary, it makes it more clear that your stock is actually stable, because the only thing that's really changed is inflation and catch up to reality from the fed turning off the money hose.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#329

Post by gedy »

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?

> Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism?

Geez, I mean there are decent managers who do rate on performance and not just buddy-buddy stuff. Frankly I'd expect to be trusted with my reviews of people under me.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#330

Post by ZephyrBlu »

iepathos wrote: post #154
jzb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job market seems to have cooled substantially from where I'm looking. I have friends at a lot of different major tech companies and hiring has slowed or stopped in all cases. Earlier this year it was full steam ahead hiring, now it's harder to get reqs, reqs are being pulled, etc. Now, if you have really in-demand skills / experience that may not matter much. But companies are slamming on the breaks. If I was lai…

Yeah, it definitely depends on what your occupation is. If you're a software engineer it's still crazy hot right now.

The poster above is talking about the SWE job market... If you think it's "crazy hot" at the moment what did you think it was last year?
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