Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 540 posts

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#121

Post by threatofrain »

petilon wrote: post #61

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now..” Zuckerberg said. Zuck is blaming the economy, but Meta's real problem is that Apple tightened iOS privacy. Meta had built a business on tracking people, and when iOS tightened privacy, Meta could not target ads as effectively as before.

The economy is an issue, but the "fault" is not in the economy or the CEO in that there is no fault. A business is not responsible for retaining employees even if the economy is strong. If we prescriptively believe that people ought have money to maintain a basic standard of living then we should have the government provide this service using public money and not private ad-funded money.

It is modern corporate style to have CEO's shed tears (sometimes literally) to show that their cold calculations actually have love behind them, but this is all just PR. We should recognize Mark's statement for what it is — standard corporate PR. And we should offer such statements as much respect as standard corporate verbiage deserves and not get into the substance of the statements as there typically is none.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#122

Post by spaceman_2020 »

boringg wrote: post #90
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #53

Our startup spends a little bit on Facebook Ads (across FB, Instagram, etc). It's very clear over the past few months that there's trouble in the ads engine. Attribution is a mess, ad efficiency fluctuates randomly, the UI and API are flaky. I don't know whether this is a result of the ios privacy changes, the broader economy affecting ad spend, or internal issues... Maybe a mix. But it's clear that Meta's main reven…

iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements. Meta is dealing with it currently - so are all small businesses who relied on good conversion from their ad targeting that has gone to isht since then. Apple will probably fill in that void at some point they've got a lock on all that intelligence. I'm curious how long it will take and how they will manage to do it without stepping on privacy toes.

The high price of Apple products in markets like India was such a great targeting filter for D2C products by itself. There was a time in 2020-21 when you could literally throw any random ad for a premium product, choose iPhone users as your target, and land wild conversions.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#123

Post by switch007 »

At my company...

1. We're aware of the economic situation and what others companies are doing and are just monitoring

2. We decided to just to ever-so-slightly ease off the gas on hiring. It's definitely not a hiring freeze. Do not use those words.

3. Things are delayed just until the budget is discussed

4. No new hires (still don't call it a freeze) 5. Small amount of layoffs ?

6. Large amount of layoffs ?

(1-4 was about 3 weeks.)

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#124

Post by [deleted] »

nobleach wrote: post #21
brentmitchell25 wrote: post #11

They should only keep the engineers that remember how to solve leetcode hard problems /s

Have you ever interviewed with Facebook/Meta? They don't do leetcode problems. Say what you want about them as a company, but I've done quite a few interviews in my career and their process was one of my favorites.

[deleted]

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#125

Post by htrp »

suresk wrote: post #64
nobleach wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever interviewed with Facebook/Meta? They don't do leetcode problems. Say what you want about them as a company, but I've done quite a few interviews in my career and their process was one of my favorites.

I had a recruiter reach out to me about some ML positions there earlier this year, and I was sort of interested in it for a bit. They have an applicant portal where they literally have you practice leetcode problems, and are pretty open that you're going to be asked those kinds of questions in the interview.

Are they at least ML leetcode problems?

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#126

Post by ilamont »

petilon wrote: post #61

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now..” Zuckerberg said. Zuck is blaming the economy, but Meta's real problem is that Apple tightened iOS privacy. Meta had built a business on tracking people, and when iOS tightened privacy, Meta could not target ads as effectively as before.

Not the only problem. Zuck's betting the farm on VR, which is sucking up resources and attention. Even if it reaches critical adoption, how many years before it starts generating true profit?

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#127

Post by spaceman_2020 »

rr888 wrote: post #103
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #53

Our startup spends a little bit on Facebook Ads (across FB, Instagram, etc). It's very clear over the past few months that there's trouble in the ads engine. Attribution is a mess, ad efficiency fluctuates randomly, the UI and API are flaky. I don't know whether this is a result of the ios privacy changes, the broader economy affecting ad spend, or internal issues... Maybe a mix. But it's clear that Meta's main reven…

To me it looks like they tried to copy TikTok, with loads of ads and turned a decent product into something no one wants to use.

They still dominate the Indian market simply because TikTok is banned here.

While I don’t undermine the spying potential of TikTok, the ban was strangely timed - soon after a huge investment from Facebook in India’s biggest company (and one with tremendous lobbying power). Only a handful of Chinese apps were banned, even though majority of devices running them were Chinese as well (and went unbanned).

Facebook very well would have lost the massive Indian market as well without the TikTok ban.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#128

Post by filoleg »

dessant wrote: post #108
filoleg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I legitimately cannot see this question in the current context as anything but being made in bad faith. Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Something like "high pay, interesting/difficult challenges and problems to work on, large scale rarely found elsewhere, and lots of learning opportunities (including loads of great engineers to learn from)" never cro…

> Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons for why someone would want to work for Meta? Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta. People usually don't land there because of a desperate need for money, which would probably be one of the very few acceptable reasons for joining that company. And why should my question be in good faith? Why should we not call out…

> I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a harmful company as Meta

WhatsApp is an extremely useful product in my life. Instagram is nice for keeping up to date with some friends I don't get a chance to hangout in-person with often, as well as following some small local artist and museum pages. I dont care for FB as a product anymore, but pre-pandemic it was great for helping organize events with my friends. Oculus Quest 2 is a product I use daily and enjoy.

Most people outside of a subset of HN boiling in their own echochamber consider a lot of those products as useful in their lives, and will just give you the look of "huh, sounds interesting, i will look into it later. Oh, just remembered I had an appointment in an hour, welp gotta go, see ya later" if you try to give them that "harmful" spiel.

> And why should my question be in good faith?

Because that's what people come to HN for. If I wanted bad faith takes galore, I would need to go no further than reddit.

> Why should we not call out people who cheerfully join organizations that pose a threat to our future, and show no civic responsibility?

Because that's just your opinion. And it is sliding into QAnon-level justifications for using arguments like "why should we wear masks, when they pose a threat to our freedoms and the way of life!" and "why should we not storm the capitol, it is a civic responsibility to free ourselves from the shadow cabal's tyrrany and threat to our future!".

I don't agree with those QAnon takes, so I hope you realize that not everyone universally agrees with your takes either. And not because they are being paid by Meta or were "brainwashed".

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#129

Post by disabled »

Perhaps Zuckerberg should be paid significantly less? Perhaps Facebook employees should fight back? Like protest or leak controversial information, especially since Facebook is in the data hoarding business?

But, stuff like this should make Facebook employees angry. Zuckerberg is not a person to envy.

Read this: https://www.velvetropes.com/backstage/mark-zuckerberg-house

Also, a few years ago Zuckerberg spent like $27 million for his own personal security in a 365 day period, which is obviously obscene.

Clearly he is a paranoid dude and certainly he keeps to himself.

But, he is a hardcore oligarch, that’s for sure.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#130

Post by TylerE »

dangus wrote: post #115
TylerE wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've gotten so damn greedy. On the mobile app literally over half my feed is ads.

I don’t know if there’s any merit to this idea, but it seems to me that saturation can become a real problem. At this point skipping a story or feed ad in Instagram is like a nearly instant reflex for me. Plus, the programming on the recommendations is laughably amateur for company as resourceful as Meta. If I interact with an ad one time I’ll see the same ad over and over for days or weeks. Sure, I was curious for a…

Actually, that's a real thing advertisers DO want.

It's called retargeting.

Post reply on HN