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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

#451

Post by wikfwikf »

dangus wrote: post #366
apendleton wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's a real thing advertisers DO want I think GP is talking about a more specific thing, and it's one I experience all the time too: that I'll visit a website briefly one time, by accident, or to satisfy some curiosity, or look up the specifications on something I already own, or to get a link to send to a friend, or whatever other non-purchase reason, and then get shown ads for their thing over and over and over…

Exactly what I’m saying. I clicked or expanded something out of momentary curiosity. Maybe the ad was provocative or mysterious and I wanted to see what the deal was. Step two, I get retargeted. That’s fine and expected. Step three, I get retargeted. Again. And again…and again. What I don’t understand is how Meta/Instagram can’t figure out at least a little bit sooner that I was clearly just satisfying my curiosity a…

People complain about this all the time.

It is annoying, but it's not illogical.

If you have looked at something once, say there's a 99% chance that you have no further interest in it. But the 1% chance that you are potentially going to buy it after being shown the ad again is still much better odds than showing it to a random person, or a random person who is somehow correlated to the target market.

Even after seeing the ad 50 more times and ignoring it, you are probably still a statistically better lead than someone who has never interacted with the ad. They're not making a strong assumption about you, even though it seems that way. They're making a very weak assumption based on the small number of people who clicked once, hesitated, saw the ad 49 times more, carried on hesitating, and now are finally ready to buy.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#452

Post by shubb »

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…

Remember that buybacks are another way of returning money to shareholders, and Meta bought 10% of it's shares this year. A 10% yield is pretty significant and reflects its high PE ratio.

However, they took on 10bn in debt this summer, joining Apple and the other FANGS. These companies claim to have high margins.

For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more, and its revenues are shrinking - that's not a growth stock and that's not an honest earnings. If you need to spend the money to continue to make sales, it's part of your operating costs. If you need to borrow money to continue to operate, you don't have a margin.

At least Meta is genuinely spending its borrowed money on future growth (trying to build this VR thing) and is continuing to grow revenue in local currency terms . We might not believe it would work, but it's honest margin. Not a zero profit growth stock - yet.

I think we are in a wierd situation where some companies are being more honest than others, and the honest ones will be punished until the pendulum swings in the next 2 quaters.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#453

Post by PreachSoup »

pempem wrote: post #405
zeusk wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the rich get to borrow and buy assets and assets go up in prices. The haves benefit way more from cheap debt than have nots who can't take out debt or have appreciating assets to begin with.

Explain it like I'm 5 (or pls link me, happy to read more): Previously the rich were borrowing easily and buying assets that go up in price bc...easy money. i.e. Houses appreciate really quickly, people can't afford them, the median income is outstripped by the median price etc. etc. Now rates are going up but more people need to lose their job and be able to afford even less just at a lower price? i.e. Houses apprec…

Housing is a supply problem. Unless we all learn from Japan and Singapore, there is no other way to increase supply

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#454

Post by Cthulhu_ »

beambot wrote: post #216
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…

A little dated [2018], but still rings true: The average tenure for engineers at many major tech companies is ~3 years. Thus, you'd expect new hires at a rate of 30% annually just to maintain staffing levels. To determine headcount growth you, should look at year-over-year changes in total employee count, not just the number of new hires. TLDR: Meta's new-hire rate is not atypical. https://www.businessinsider.com/ave…

And this 3 years is kept up artificially - companes like Meta or, as a colleague of mine who works there now, Github / Microsoft, offer stock packages that they can only use after four years. It's a pair of golden handcuffs; they would move on a lot faster I'm sure if it wasn't for that + the wages offered.

Having Microsoft or Google or Meta on your CV is a very valuable thing to have, regardless of what you actually did there, because they're still perceived as having high standards.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#455

Post by gwd »

shubb wrote: post #452
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…

Remember that buybacks are another way of returning money to shareholders, and Meta bought 10% of it's shares this year. A 10% yield is pretty significant and reflects its high PE ratio. However, they took on 10bn in debt this summer, joining Apple and the other FANGS. These companies claim to have high margins. For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more, and…

> For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more...

NB that having a large cash reserve and borrowing more money are not mutually exclusive. From a large company's perspective, borrowing money when times are good and money is easy to get are low gives the company a "war chest" to either be able to suddenly invest money quickly should the need arise, or to weather long drawn-out storms, when times are bad and money is hard to get.

EDIT: Apple has around $100B in debt, and around $202 billion in cash reserves; it could pay off its debt tomorrow if it wanted to; but then it would have "only" $100B in cash.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#456

Post by Cthulhu_ »

brentmitchell25 wrote: post #11

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

The problem with companies the size of Meta - and even down to 1/10th the size - is that there's just so many moving parts, it's a day job just to try and figure out how things work and where to implement a change.

It's no wonder that - at least for a while - Google was churning out new products left and right. It allows people to build new stuff instead of have to maintain existing stuff.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#457

Post by deepGem »

tsimionescu wrote: post #424
deepGem wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by the current inflation and unemployment trends, the economy won't stabilize for a year at the very least. We have a very difficult situation. Inflation is high, unemployment is low. In 2008, we had low inflation and high unemployment, but not this time. So, with the tightening of interest rates, unemployment has to go high. With unemployment increasing, prices of goods will fall due to decrease in demand. At…

Why are you speaking as if high unemployment is better than high inflation?

Am not saying it's better, am saying it's inevitable.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#459

Post by lordnacho »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #297
lordnacho wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much stronger competition in the streaming space. Disney has better content for every family with kids, so they're first choice. Amazon already has people via Prime. How many more are you going to buy? Possibly one, small chance of two? You've got Netflix and all the others scrambling for that last space in the house. Plus they don't seem to be able to make a hit show of the kind that gets subscriptions, just a lot o…

Sure, but I do not see why that would cause bankruptcy. Their market cap would shrink, but unless they are over leveraged, they should be able to continue operating without “folding”.

It's not necessarily the case that the company goes bankrupt, it just sort of goes sideways forever. At some point someone will get the brilliant plan of borrowing in order to invest in relaunching the company.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#460

Post by Gareth321 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #411
eloff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe doesn't have a population collapse. They make up the difference with immigration, as does Canada and the US. Japan and China do not.

Most immigration to Europe is incredibly low-bar unskilled economic chancers interested in exploiting the welfare state, not skilled workers, doctors and engineers like you get in US and Canada which have stricter immigration policies.

I am generally in favour of tightening migration laws in general around Europe, but even I can admit that this isn't accurate. Many European countries are wonderful places to live and raise families. Canada and the U.S. absolutely compete with the U.K., Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and even France and Germany, on skilled workers. The U.S. offers the best wages, and people motivated primarily by wages will try the U.S. first. But there are lots of people who either don't make the H1B cut, don't want to be beholden to political whims during the arduous trek to citizenship (which can take a decade or more, with multiple gates), or (and this one is a big one), are turned off by U.S. education, violence, crime, health outcomes, lack of social safety nets, and politics.

All that said, Europe is going to have to become much tougher on refugees in the coming decades. I foresee a re-negotiation of the various refugee conventions written at a very different time in history.

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