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Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

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Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#371

Post by adam_arthur »

colinmhayes wrote: post #284
yuan43 wrote: post #161

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg said. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose…

> which offers no dividend be valued accordingly. FWIW Meta has apparently done $15 billion in buybacks this year which gives them a 4% yield at current cap. Investors generally prefer buybacks to dividends because of tax advantages, so this should actually have helped their stock more than a 4% div yield would.

A 4% yield is not very good when you can buy risk free treasuries yielding more.

Meta's shares outstanding have barely changed over time. Issuing equity to employees dilutes share count, buybacks counter this somewhat.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...

At current valuation multiples buybacks are pretty smart for Meta, but many of these companies were doing buybacks at 3% yield valuations

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#372

Post by sgerenser »

andsoitis wrote: post #279
arberx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups), but a repricing for sure. We don't even know the market demand for these products because cheap money has made everyone a startup founder, and every company pivoted to providing a "tech" solution when it might not have been economically viable or provided any profit.

> No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups) You wrote: “Since most tech/saas companies sell/support other saas companies, they all go down.”

“Go down” presumably meaning stock goes down, not “goes bankrupt.”

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#373

Post by sverhagen »

ilamont wrote: post #126
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?

If he ends up being right, we'll all praise him as a great visionary. They have the means for what it would take. But since I'm not a great visionary, I'll just go on the record with: no chance, there's no real addressable market there...

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#374

Post by bave8672 »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #359

If Meta vanished tomorrow, would it actually have a negative effect on our lives?

The void in the market would be quickly filled by a competitor (users in other threads have mentioned TikTok...). Whether or not this is a negative is an exercise left to the reader.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#375

Post by [deleted] »

tw20212021 wrote: post #154
bitL wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience they place most weight on system design. They allow you to get 1-2 neutral flags from leetcoding and still get an offer.

When I did the system design interview the guy told me that zuckeberg created memcached. Not sure if he meant used or invented, could have just been a language thing. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't pass.

[deleted]

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#376

Post by majormajor »

BurningFrog wrote: post #234
yuan43 wrote: post #161

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg said. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose…

> The economy is stabilizing. The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed tightening since at least the 1980s. If you know where that will end up, congrats. For the rest of us, it's very much uncharted waters.

"uncharted waters" is so tired.

When's the last time they were "charted" economically? Things have been changing constantly for a century, basically.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#377

Post by EFreethought »

woeirua wrote: post #175

Zuck is absolutely going to call back all the remote engineers that he hired over the past two years to the office, and just like with Tesla, those who refuse will be involuntarily separated. Work from home, _is_ going to die at the megacorps.

I do not understand why so many companies are so intent on getting people back into the office.

I looked at the income statements for a few techs and banks on Yahoo Finance, and for the tech companies their net income is up from 2019 (in some cases doubled), and for the banks it is about the same as 2019 (I picked 2019 because that was before COVID). Companies are doing fine with remote work. I don't get what their problem is.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#378

Post by dividefuel »

UncleMeat wrote: post #241
woeirua wrote: post #175

Zuck is absolutely going to call back all the remote engineers that he hired over the past two years to the office, and just like with Tesla, those who refuse will be involuntarily separated. Work from home, _is_ going to die at the megacorps.

This is my fear at Google. I'm now remote for family reasons. If for some reason they decide to do layoffs the "cut the remote staff" approach might feel attractive for foolish execs.

I'm in the same boat. I would be pretty insulted if they reneged on remote work and used that as the primary decision criteria on who to keep or let go. Especially since I took a pay cut to go remote and most of the folks I work with are in other offices anyway.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#379

Post by SamvitJ »

loeg wrote: post #191
drfuzzy89 wrote: post #136

Is it known whether this sort of hiring freeze affects all levels? I have a friend who's in-progress for a staff role at Meta and I had heard in the past that staff was often "immune to hiring freezes."

"Active interview loops will continue," but also "we will not make any offers until the freeze is lifted." So, go figure. Edit: IC7+ is explicitly not frozen. > The only roles that will remain open are SWE IC7+, Data Center roles, and 2023 Intern, Pathway and AI STE class hiring

What does AI STE refer to? (AI software engineer?)

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#380

Post by actually_a_dog »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #113
boringg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements A problem I see with FB is that they don't control anything on which they run. They run on stuff from their competitors: it's either Google (Chrome / Android), Microsot (Windows / Edge) or Apple (OS X / Safari / iOS). Despite the downturn these three behemoths are still enjoying a market cap in the trillion+. Meta is actually down to $360 bn. Meta controls neither the…

> A problem I see with FB is that they don't control anything on which they run. They run on stuff from their competitors: it's either Google (Chrome / Android), Microsot (Windows / Edge) or Apple (OS X / Safari / iOS).

You do realize you just described the vast majority of all tech companies that exist today, right?

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