"Desk sharing"... I wonder with the cost-cutting appeal of smaller real estate footprints and remote work if the huge campus era is actually drawing to a close.
Meta lays off 11,000 people
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would him taking responsibility in practice look like to you?
Has he actually admitted how he failed in his responsibilities? I have not followed the FB fall closely but from the outside there appears to be some dubious strategic decisions at work. It would be interesting to hear him elaborate on the situation with something like “I failed to see how precarious it was to be at the mercy of Google and Apple for our core ad business”. Or, “looking back, it was a mistake to not ge…
You believe that a company with plenty of privacy concerns and/or user data handling would've been successful on cloud?
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#523"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.
Why? If I were working there and on that tech, I’d stay.
It’s a cool project and I like working on cool projects while being able to live a comfortable life.
What are you working on that’s more fascinating than VR?
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
At sone point “I take responsibility” came to mean nothing more than “My bad”. It’s as if the act of saying it was your fault is all that’s necessary. Ive noticed it used this way more and more, presumably as people realize it’s utility as a get of jail free card
Just months ago, "The Crying CEO" guy became a viral meme for expressing too much empathy in a layoff. It's fucking job terminations. You're GOING to be criticized no matter how you do them. The best approach is to just be robotic about it, and maybe throw in a platitude that amounts to, "It's not you, it's me" .
The Stripe people did it right, or at least as right as you can under these circumstances.
https://stripe.com/en-au/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons...
Relevant discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33450753
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#525> 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…
Yeah that’s about it. He’s lost about $90b in net worth. I suppose you can debate whether that’s punishment enough
He didn't pay a fine, it isn't any sort of punishment. He tanked the value of the asset that is the primary component of his wealth. That money is gone whether he "takes responsibility" or not.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#526I'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.
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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#527"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.
Well, they missed the boat being a platform on mobile or desktop. So, now they have Apple/Google dictating terms to them.
They are really desperate to own the next big thing. Whether that'll be VR, who knows.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#528"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 wonder if no-one from higher-ups in Meta tell Zuckerberg that it is not going to happen and explain to him what sunk cost fallacy is.
Maybe Sandberg did, and he disagreed and now she's gone with a bunch of stuff leaked to try and embarrass her.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#529Facebook has become the local town square on the Internet. Thousands of active local groups is something that other social networks will have a hard time replicating. Marketplace is another feature that takes advantage of Facebook having a strong local presence, everywhere. Why did they pivot towards VR and metaverse when Facebook's strength is being the "Localverse"?
No they aren't. Because of [censored] algorithmic timeline you only see posts Facebook decided are relevant for you, and usually they aren't the ones you are most interested to see.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#530> 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…
It means he's not trying to scapegoat a VP or the board or say "It's not my fault nobody foresaw this economy." It doesn't mean anything in terms of action or "self-punishment" but nor should it. The dude has already lost many more billions of dollars than you or I will ever see. I'm no fan of the guy, but some people won't even take responsibility verbally. So at least he's not descending that low. And the severance…
> The dude has already lost many more billions of dollars than you or I will ever see.
Is it worse to lose a billion dollars when you have two b, or a thousand dollars when all you have is 2k?