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Meta lays off 11,000 people

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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#181

Post by matwood »

rvz wrote: post #50

Good. About time. $180K per employee for years is not sustainable. This is the general 'Tech Crash' I was talking about before all of this happened in advance. [0] [1] We'll see what happens after the news. No company is safe. Not even FAAMNG companies that HN has been screaming about for years was ever untouchable. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238

> $180K per employee for years is not sustainable.

By what metric? Metas profits the first 3Qs of the year totaled ~$17B. They would have been higher if not for Zuck's insane spending on the metaverse.

As the letter says, Meta clearly over hired around covid to the tune of 30k+ people. It's normal to pull back some.

Engineers at these companies generate so much economic value, I would argue they are still underpaid at 180k.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#182

Post by tumetab1 »

sidcool wrote: post #56

As much as I dislike Meta's practices, this was well handled. Decent severance and support.

Allowing access to email until the end of day also seems an improvement over other US companies practices

> We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive information. But we’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#184

Post by przefur »

tifadg1 wrote: post #137
whatwherewhy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the small central EU country where I live, that wouldn't even saturate the open programmer positions - just about 1/10 of it. I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in any measurable way. If anything this just means these people will be working on more different products, and that means more opportunities for even more programmers in the future.

I'm quite interested in learning which small central EU country has 150k outstanding programming jobs.

Romania? Poland?

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#185

Post by saiya-jin »

ptman wrote: post #94
daniaal wrote: post #75

Google did the same sort of crazy hiring and i wonder if they will be next to layoff thousands

I read (an estimate?) somewhere that google has been doing this by not renewing contractors and cutting hiring

That's a version of this which doesn't stress out employees so the best ones don't jump the ship at first occasion.

Our org went through something similar some 6 year ago, and it was a stark contrast with previous frequent firing rounds when nobody would be secure, sometimes even best within given team were let go (ie due to current allocation issues).

But this can replace small firing ie up to 10%, not when you are doing stuff musk-style.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#186

Post by Ocerge »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #165
nokeya wrote: post #32

So, after Twitter and Meta layoffs there will be around 15,000 people looking for the job. In one moment. With other layoffs it can be counted over 20,000 people IMHO. Will this over flood the market and bring expectations and salaries down?

I remember the dot-com (and Y2K) bust, when all the people who got into tech for the money (and not the love of it) suddenly decided to switch career. I hope the same happens now.

So you're implying only people who are passionate about tech should be allowed to work in tech? This does not hold water for almost any profession. Tech pays extremely well, and if you can do the work, who cares how you feel about it?

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#187

Post by sbarre »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #154
pmontra wrote: post #41

> At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. This is very similar to the Stripe layoff memo at https://…

> Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended Who predicted this? The general consensus among folks I know was that the economy was in for an ass blasting once the pandemic supports were removed.

I think the whole "many predicted" statement that several large tech companies have used to thin out all the pandemic hires is cover for the fact that they boom-hired during the pandemic knowing full well they would very likely have to shed those hires when things went back to pre-pandemic levels and the opportunity for short-term profit was over.

Shopify called it a "bet", which was a surprisingly honest way of framing it, by at least admitting to the risk and uncertainty that existed around all their growth.

Also saying "many predicted" is less culpable than saying "we kinda knew we'd have to eventually do this, but hey short-term profits, right?"

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