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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

#391

Post by lotsofpulp »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #349
lotsofpulp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta/Microsoft/Amazon all did not want to plow the billions of dollars and years it takes to develop hardware that can compete with iPhone and Android. They bet that they did not need to, but unfortunately for Meta, looks like they should have.

They all DID plow billions of dollars into phone efforts, but they just couldn't muscle their way into a competitive position They could all definitely manufacture Android devices and hold some Android sub-market share, but that business isn't interesting to them. They wanted to control a platform, and when it was clear that wasn't going to happen (after spending many billions), they gave up.

Clearly they needed to plow more billions and years. They are competing with company that has spent a decade+ developing a retail store presence as well as iterating over and over on their product.

But Microsoft and Google and Meta were not interested in “in person support” or business that does not scale, and part of the price they pay for that is to be gimped by Apple at a moments notice and watch your market cap dive.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#392

Post by dragontamer »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #346
dragontamer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed tightening since at least the 1980s. But the 2010s through 2020s period is a myth, a figment of cheap money. This money was made cheap to help us get out of the 2007/2008 recession, but the cheap money clearly went on too long. Its warped all of our thinking. We should have been raising rates and paying down the Fed's balance sheet a long, long time ago. To be f…

I think another factor is the rise of china, which ramped up massively in that time, hid inflation. We thought the near 0% rates had no consequences except for housing and a few other non china influenced products. It turns out the inflation was there but china's ramp up hid it. In fact, in hindsight we saw inflation everywhere except in china's manufacturing (and perhaps an oil sands boom helped too). But china manu…

Inflation everywhere? Like in car prices? Food costs? Eggs? Milk? Butter? Paper? Wood? Lumber? Orange Juice?

These things aren't made in China (or at least, the USA largely eats milk-and-eggs from USA and/or Canada), and for the 2010 through 2019 period, their prices were incredibly stable.

What American manufactured product (or agricultural product) inflated from 2010 through 2019 to a degree beyond which was reasonable?

--------

The main issue with the Fed, was that they made the wrong call on Inflation in 2021, thinking it was "transitory". Now that we've had a year, I can agree with the inflation doomers that the inflation was in fact sticking this time around.

However, the inflation doomers were wrong from 2010 through 2019, so you'll have to forgive me for not listening to the boys who cried wolf.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#393

Post by de6u99er »

I predicted that Facebooks VR/AR gamble won't tak off. Simply because developing virtual content and tools is IMO comparable to game development. Also wearing such a headset for longer time becomes quite uncomfortable. I start sweating under it and most of us here in Europe don't have AC's at home which makes it impossible to use when it's warm.

That being said, I am curious how PlayStation5's VR2 will do. I got the one for PS4 and I didn't really use it. I doubt that the new one will do much better because the headset is still large and many people don't have the necessary space at home.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#394

Post by ivalm »

askafriend wrote: post #388
naniwaduni wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has its own almost-opposite problem in only counting employees who did leave .

Well you can also just count current employees' tenure. That fixes the problem and is qualitatively consistent IMO.

That’s how you get 3 years because everyone is new.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#395

Post by stormbrew »

eloff wrote: post #336
mvuksano wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other country that ever showed anything other then upside-down U in terms of economy strength and influence. To best of my knowledge every country, empire or society rises and eventually falls. Probably the best known example is Roman empire but every other society I can think of exhibits same pattern.

Hah, good point! In the case of China they're likely to peak soon. The USA might peak much later still. The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years. I have my doubts the US can go the distance, but let's see.

> The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years.

Treating all the things that were called "The Roman Empire" as one thing is a pretty big stretch. Modern nations have much more rigid and well-defined natures.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#397

Post by ivalm »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #380
TacticalCoder wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yeah, and fb is bigger than them. The question is more about what it takes to be a trillion dollar co.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#398

Post by askafriend »

ivalm wrote: post #394
askafriend wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can also just count current employees' tenure. That fixes the problem and is qualitatively consistent IMO.

That’s how you get 3 years because everyone is new.

You're right - my mistake.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#399

Post by Aunche »

dragontamer wrote: post #392
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think another factor is the rise of china, which ramped up massively in that time, hid inflation. We thought the near 0% rates had no consequences except for housing and a few other non china influenced products. It turns out the inflation was there but china's ramp up hid it. In fact, in hindsight we saw inflation everywhere except in china's manufacturing (and perhaps an oil sands boom helped too). But china manu…

Inflation everywhere? Like in car prices? Food costs? Eggs? Milk? Butter? Paper? Wood? Lumber? Orange Juice? These things aren't made in China (or at least, the USA largely eats milk-and-eggs from USA and/or Canada), and for the 2010 through 2019 period, their prices were incredibly stable. What American manufactured product (or agricultural product) inflated from 2010 through 2019 to a degree beyond which was reason…

>The main issue with the Fed, was that they made the wrong call on Inflation in 2021, thinking it was "transitory".

They made the wrong prediction, but the Fed isn't in the business of making predictions. It makes sense that they didn't want to crash the economy while people were still largely intent on staying at home. The Fed's mistake was caving into Trump's pressure to reverse quantitative tightening when the economy was healthy in 2019. When an unexpected disaster inevitably struck, they little headroom to lower interest rates, so they had no choice but to ramp up quantitative easing.

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