491–500 of 1001 posts
> 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…
What would him taking responsibility in practice look like to you?
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…
Free money hasn't run out, it's simply stopped growing as quickly. Then again it grew massively during COVID so FAANG is still ahead of where they'd have been if not for COVID. Meta revenue is DOUBLE what it was 3 years ago.
Sorry for all the people who’ve lost their jobs, but I’m excited to see the awesome world-changing stuff they’ll make now that they’re not spending their time building FB/Instagram.
Do you think that great, world-changing, folks go to Facebook to sit on a big salary? if they were going to do something awesome they probably wouldn't have been working there. now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be different
> 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…
FB is making $30+bn a year profit, and is laying off people to reduce costs by $2b. They could continue to pay these people. Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium company would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the business. Some even until after that point. Layoffs are awful. Large corps, nah. Just lay people off if we get a little nervous! Note, I don't think these corps are entitled to employ…
This is super idealized. How many layoffs have been going on in startup land recently?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't agree with that take at all. No leader would be able to learn from mistakes or grow if they had to metaphorically commit Seppuku every time they made a mistake by resigning or abdicating their authority. Taking responsibility would mean owning the situation as being caused by you, and critically evaluating your actions to see if there were different paths you could have taken given the same information, or if…
This is very far from Zuck's first mistake. In any case, though, I offered an alternative: making himself accountable to the board of directors. He is not accountable. He can't be fired, he can only resign. The fundamental problem is that Zuck gets to define the terms of his own accountability, which is almost an oxymoron.
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…
"We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas [like] our long-term vision for the metaverse" Imagine laying off eleven thousand people so you can keep clinging to the disintegrating corpse of the metaverse.
How can you call it a disintegrating corpse when it's been in the public eye for what, a few months? I don't get it.
"We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas [like] our long-term vision for the metaverse" Imagine laying off eleven thousand people so you can keep clinging to the disintegrating corpse of the metaverse.
I’d feel pretty embarrassed right now to be working in VR at meta while seeing coworkers getting laid off.
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?
There are hundreds of thousands of new software jobs in the US every year. Way more globally. This is a drop in the bucket. Shit, I get messaged about a thousand software jobs per year and I'm just one guy.
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.
Personally, I see it as a cycle which appears to be repeating itself, especially after re-reading The Intelligent Investors assessment in the years after the 2000 crash, and comparing it to some of the current offerings out there. I would be interested to hear your perspective on the matter.