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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

#481

Post by ethbr0 »

dirtyid wrote: post #439
eloff wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan's economy has been stagnant for the last thirty years[1]. China can look forward to worse by all indications so far. Upskilling their labor force won't fix that. It didn't save Japan. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/gdp-growth-r...

>labor force won't fix Not for JP because their skillforce potential was already relatively maxed out, their education reform paid off late in 70s while domestic politics squandered female labour participation. JP stagnanted after it tapped out demographic divident of educated/skilled work force in 80s - JP didn't have enough people / demand to upgrade what she had left to push further. Ultimately she settled in fair…

I read Japan's lack of growth as directly stemming from their cultural conservatism. I believe they're among the countries with the lowest immigration and least ethnic foreigners living there?

It's hard to engage economically with a diverse world when your available viewpoints are less diverse. At some point you reach a ceiling.

China has run through the Japanese hypergrowth years (leverage wage disparity, then move up value chain by producing copies of higher value items) and is now in the R&D phase. We'll see how it goes from here.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#482

Post by oblio »

philjohn wrote: post #441
de6u99er wrote: post #393

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…

That assumes that the headsets won't get smaller and lighter over time.

If the threshold for the headsets to become comfortable in mainstream conditions is 10-15 years away, their metaverse will fail.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#483

Post by decafninja »

stonogo wrote: post #409
decafninja wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just pay, but also perks, people, and prestige. All of which will make your daily life as an engineer more pleasant and catapult your future career in ways the vast majority of other companies cannot. Is it selfish? Perhaps. And maybe Meta will fall out of the pantheon of top tech companies at some point, but for now they’re still there. The projects in their domain is definitely more interesting than slogging th…

Sorry, I must not have expressed my question clearly. Specifically which projects are interesting? They don't seem to be doing anything new, at least from the outside. I don't mean by that 'anything new for Facebook' but genuinely novel things, things you can't work on anywhere else. Stipulated the rest of it -- what's the engineering challenge?

Fair question - and to be honest, since I’ve never worked there - I don’t know.

But to counter that, again, what’s the interesting or exciting engineering challenges at the various mundane companies where the vast majority of SWEs work at?

Having worked at such “boring” companies, but recently transferred to an “exciting” company in the same tier as Meta, I can say the fundamental concept of my projects or work hasn’t changed, but everything around it has. The people around you, the resources available, the respect, the culture.

It’s all a matter of context too. If you’re the type of elite SWE that can snap their fingers and land offers at any of the FAANGMULA+ companies, then sure it’s much easier to scoff at Meta and say there are many equivalently “interesting” places to work out there.

On the other hand if you’re someone that struggles with leetcode and Meta is the only company of its type that gives you an offer and the rest are cost center companies like the Wells Fargos and Home Depots of the world, then that’s another story.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#484

Post by ethbr0 »

caskstrength wrote: post #461
ethbr0 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect that's the real reason for the US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine: signalling to China about Taiwan. Because pursuing a similar strategy with China would be substantially more expensive, in terms of treasure and blood, for both sides. But the critical date there seems to be 2030-2035 based on military preparations.

> US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine If you look past their big talks of outrage in news media and critically asses the actual amount of military equipment given to Ukraine, you will see that it is nowhere close to any kind of "all-in", hardline or not. They are still refusing to provide even modern main battle tanks FFS.

They wouldn't receive offensive arms, until they did. They wouldn't receive HIMARS, until they did. They wouldn't receive fighter aircraft, until they did.

The only red lines on material escalation seem to be around ATACMS.

I'd expect MBTs and A-10s by next spring, with training over winter.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#485

Post by wollsmoth »

cetahfh14615 wrote: post #428
wollsmoth wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metaverse is an interesting idea, but they're too quick to hail it as the feature of the company imo. It just looks like an expensive, boring, video game right now.

> Metaverse is an interesting idea It just seems like a mix of xbox kinect and roblox maybe zuck is just having a midlife crisis, who knows

I think he's deluding himself a little. I think VR is going to be a niche product for a long, long time. AR, if cool enough, could maybe catch on. But it needs to be as easy as putting on shades.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#486

Post by charcircuit »

seibelj wrote: post #370
charcircuit wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less business were able to. Personalized ads makes it so that more businesses are viable.

Apple is a private company, they decided to limit the current mechanism through which adtech tracked people, and if people dislike it they can switch to more advertising-friendly devices. What I like about the current situation is everything is done freely - no law was passed to make Apple do it, nor make Meta use it. As consumers start understanding exactly how adtech works - and such education took decades - they a…

>As consumers start understanding exactly how adtech works

I can assure you that consumers do not. Even someone in this comment section of a technical form didn't know what attribution is which is an important part of how adtech works. Even from an extremely high level the prevalence of the phrase "XYZ is selling your data" despite that not happening is a clear sign that most people just parrot what they hear than actually understand. There has been a large amount of scaremongering about how bad this tracking is to people. This scaremongering drives more people to opt out than people opting out who actually understand how it works.

>Businesses would be more viable if they learned to market through mechanisms that were less distasteful to consumers.

That is not true. If the cost of that alternative marketing costs more than what you will make from doing it then the business is not viable.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#487

Post by caskstrength »

ethbr0 wrote: post #484
caskstrength wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine If you look past their big talks of outrage in news media and critically asses the actual amount of military equipment given to Ukraine, you will see that it is nowhere close to any kind of "all-in", hardline or not. They are still refusing to provide even modern main battle tanks FFS.

They wouldn't receive offensive arms, until they did. They wouldn't receive HIMARS, until they did. They wouldn't receive fighter aircraft, until they did. The only red lines on material escalation seem to be around ATACMS. I'd expect MBTs and A-10s by next spring, with training over winter.

So you are saying that they are not even close to being all-in but may still do it some time in the future? Okay then.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#488

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #479
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't this accurate? I never said Europe is not a great place. I said that the statistical majority of immigrants moving here are mostly low skilled refugees in the tens of thousands a month, rather than the much needed doctors, nurses, teachers and various workers and engineers wich are very few of the total immigration population.

While that may be true today , that's where future doctors, nurses, teachers, and various workers and engineers come from. Young people + a functioning and accessible education system is what produces highly skilled workers.

In an ideal world maybe. In the real word, what you hope for was definitely not the result of Europe's uncontrolled immigration policies. If you want future doctors, nurses, etc, you need to to select for those through a points based immigration system like the US, Canada, Australia, etc. are doing instead of letting all the chancers in who are willing to pay smugglers and cheat the asylum system and hope they'll then want to play by the rules and become doctors and nurses.

Last week I saw a report with Middle Eastern migrants stuck in Serbia wanting to cross into the EU (Germany and Austria specifically). They interviewed one migrant from Iraq with his wife and five small kids, let's call him "Bob", and the reporter asked Bob why he's trying to get to the EU. He said it's because there's no future in Iraq. Well Bob, let me ask you this, if you knew there's no future in Iraq, why did you decided to have five kids then? Surely if you live in poverty, then birth control is a better idea no? Or oral/anal/pulling out, if that's not available. But instead, the EU(German/Austrian) taxpayer will have to pay to house a man with no knowledge of birth control or sense of personal responsibility, who's only professional skill is busting nuts, and his numerous family.

A mixed-race friend of mine volunteers in a refugee center here since he speaks several languages and he's pissed that migrants just laugh at us, saying "Europeans are so stupid they pay us for everything then give us more money which we just send back home".

This kind of immigration does not breed the results you're hoping for since it mostly encourages the ones willing to cheat to get free stuff rather that to contribute to the host nation.

The rich countries with restrictive immigration policies and high barrier of entry (US, Canada, Australia, New-Zeeland, Switzerland), attract the highly skilled and most productive immigrants that will add the most amount of value back into the economy. EU mostly attracts welfare shoppers.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#489

Post by colinmhayes »

adam_arthur wrote: post #371
colinmhayes wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Very few s&p companies are hitting 4% yields on their dividends/buybacks. Meta shares outstanding are down more than 3% since last year.

Re: Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

#490

Post by htkibar »

time_to_smile wrote: post #111
arberx wrote: post #5

Tech is reflexive. Since most tech/saas companies sell/support other saas companies, they all go down. Think about all the startups who rely on AWS, Apple computers, and Facebook ads. What happens when they all die? The tech bull run is over, and we'll find out where the bodies lie soon.

The downvote arrow as slowly become a "truths I don't want to hear" button on HN. Too much cheap money and a grow at any costs mentality has lead to exactly this is problem where every tech company is very tightly coupled with every other tech company. I'm in the B2B space for one of the many non-profitable, recently IPO'd companies. As far as companies goes, this one is pretty sane. Healthy growth, a product that ma…

Granted, we will all have trim the fat moment but I doubt the level of doom and gloom is warranted, as we are not in a "massive, massive tech bubble". If anything, tech hasn't penetrated enough into our lives yet.

Most likely; these services will evolve into a format where it is financially more viable - which might even allow them to reach larger audiences.

Ideally, this should happen in a slow fashion (which it seems to be happening). A sudden crash would be more chaotic, but on the long term I doubt we have much to worry about as a sector; there'll still be plenty of jobs for tech workers.

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