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Meta lays off 11,000 people

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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#441

Post by jacobsenscott »

mattmaroon wrote: post #364
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

Yeah that’s about it. He’s lost about $90b in net worth. I suppose you can debate whether that’s punishment enough or not when you’ve got another $38b left or whatever. But I’ll tell you this from experience: lasting people off because you chose to grow too fast is really, really hard. I’ve done it, though in my case it was a lot fewer people and I actually knew and loved them all. If I had to lay off 11,000 people I…

This isn't hard for Zuck - he just directs his subordinates to layoff a bunch of people, and then goes back to swimming in his vault of cash. Losing x billion of essentially infinity money is the same as losing no money. Once you reach Zuck's level of wealth you can't really even conceive of non-billionairs as the being same species as you, much less empathize with them.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#442

Post by acjohnson55 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #416
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?

Makes me wonder if there’s enough layoffs coupled with a recession, corps would use this to get people back in the office and eliminate WFH.

They can try. But it would be a better time to build a team without the overhead of renting office space. I guess it depends on whether companies see an opportunity to wind back leverage from employees or to embrace new possibilities.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#443

Post by renaudg »

tootie wrote: post #299
eschneider wrote: post #146

I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.

This is going to be a repeat of 2000, not 2008. There's seemingly no contagion and no secular stagnation. This is just unwinding of the cheap money era that flowed overwhelmingly into SV. You'll see a cooling off of red hot compensation, a lot of failed startups that no one ever understood and the ongoing crypto crash. This may end up being enough to trigger a mild recession.

I was around in 2000. It had the failed startups but it didn't have inflation, war, and a pandemic.

Long Covid alone is going to hamper any economic recovery. It's a mass disabling event. The sooner we recognize this and start tackling it, the better : https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-workforce-absenteeism-pro...

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#444

Post by lapcat »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

Taking responsibility would mean resigning as CEO, for example. Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute power, can't be voted out by the board of directors, and thus has no accountability for his actions and mistakes.

But just saying that you're taking responsibility is not actually taking responsibility. It's empty words.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#445

Post by Reason077 »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #418

The world runs on certain types of software. I doesn't run on social media, or video streaming, or "AI/ML", or search. So it doesn't actually run on FAANG companies. It is no surprise they are shedding workers when the free money runs out. But if you are willing to work on "boring software" that provides actual economic value - logistics, HR/Payroll, or really anything people actually pay to use because it boosts the…

Sure, FAANG may make a lot of frivolous stuff (Metaverse, anyone?) but also a lot of boring software that the world really does run on now days. Google especially.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#446

Post by chipgap98 »

IronWolve wrote: post #244
eschneider wrote: post #146

I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.

Correct, Take the first round of payouts, always. Almost every 10+ years a mega company buys the company I'm working for and lays off everyone. The first time I stayed on and didnt take the layoff with my group, was going to merge into the new company. Then after a year, was let go and didnt get the big layoff package, then my manager left. Totally screwed out of a major layoff package as it was a year later, way pas…

I'm not saying there won't be more layoffs, but I don't think this advice makes sense for people at places like Meta. They are generating a ton of revenue and profit even with the current economic conditions.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#447

Post by hbn »

DarkGroku wrote: post #436

FB still making 4Billion in profit, all the comments here dont seem to talk about that Twitter wasnt profitable, FB is and laid off 4x the amount of employees, Zuck just saw Musk do it and thought itd be a perfect time while the attention is on Musk and Twitter, that letter Zuck wrote is sick and sounds like its written by a sad emotionless robot he brags about how profitable Meta is in that letter its pathetic, remi…

All these layoffs seem to follow the same format of "we're sad to have to let you all go even though business is booming and we're pulling in more money than ever!"

I assume it's for the shareholders. A plain "we're laying people off" letter without the asterisk of how good they're doing is just asking for people to cash out.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#448

Post by CamelRocketFish »

flakeoil wrote: post #385
maltelandwehr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you include Stripe, Klarna, Netflix, Uber, Robinhood, Snap, Lyft, etc. tech layoffs in recent months have topped 100,000 now.

Add to that thousands of smaller companies laying of 10 people here, 100 people there. We will not hear about it, but it quickly adds up. In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new entrants added to the pool.

> In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new entrants added to the pool.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Hiring students is much cheaper so companies may still hire them whilst letting go of other expensive employees at a cost of quality.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#449

Post by robbintt »

reaperducer wrote: post #407
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Perhaps he will give up his sixth boat, or his fourth house, or his 13th car? Maybe he's going to wait on buying that private island until next quarter. Everyone has to make sacrifices.

It might slow the pace at which he tries to take over the private resources of the island of Kauai, Hawaii from the billionaires before him but I doubt it.

I think it's interesting how pedestrian Oprah, Zuck, and Larry Ellison are, obsessing over a place Elvis visited for pork barbecue parties while demonstrating 0 understanding of local people and their needs.

It's incredibly embarrassing for humanity.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#450

Post by martius »

hbn wrote: post #420

> Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I mean people who had financial gain on the line (like yourselves) pretended this was the case so you could cash in at the time and then pull the rug once it wasn't working any more (as you're doing now), but everyone with half a brain knew it wasn't sustainable. Literally how could that acceleration be p…

I read this as "we expected to stay at the levels we were at at the beginning of 2022, but instead things went back (down) to the levels of 2019".
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