Getting tired of “I take responsibility” without taking responsibility.
Could you highlight in detail how responsibility wasn't taken in your opinion and which parts of the text we've all read highlights that?
Nope.
Meta lays off 11,000 people
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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#542> 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?
Good question. I don't know the answer. And that points to the problem, really. In rhe world as ut is, there isnt really a way to realistically imagine a CEO doing anything meaningful to take responsibility for a self-admitted error lile this.
If, just for the sake of argument, I said he should resign or compensate the affected people out of his own pocket, I'm fairly sure that people here would think I was being naive. People here are already saying that corporate leaders wouldnt take decisions if they had to be held responsible for the outcomes.
So we end-up with a bunch of people who everyone knows (a) are not responsible for mistakes, and (b) are tacitly understood to be able to make statements that habe no meaning. In other words, lies.
And thus the domain of trust becomes smaller and more fractured.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#543I'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.
Not necessarily: I know companies paid 2 weeks/year in the first round and 3 weeks/year in the second round a year later.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#544"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 have this (maybe wrong) opinion that Meta can't be the one to bring an actual VR/Metaverse project because they are too "on the radar" of medias. Adoption of new technologies is always done by more fringe members and then picked up by critical mass. You can't successfully build a metaverse without accepting the kind of weird deviant stuff that goes on in VRChat and Meta can't accept the weird deviant stuff because…
iPhone was speculated about as an Apple product for years by the media before it came out. Newsweek even did a cover story about it.
Also, the initial launch of iPhone didn’t support apps or Flash (i.e. no porno videos on the web!), and the App Store has never supported deviant communities. Apple’s policies probably precipitated Tumblr’s no nudity moderation.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Those are mostly virtual dollars and he has a lot more real ones in his account, while I agree that whatever he does to "punish himself" will be practically meaningless it might have some symbolic meaning. Lowering his and senior management salaries and incentives won't save jobs but will give a better image of the crisis
His salary is already only $1/yr, and has been since 2013. So there's nothing to do there.
And lowering the salaries of senior management doesn't make any sense. They're paid market rates. If you punitively cut their compensation in half or something, they'll just leave for another company that does pay market rate. You can't force them to stick around and be "punished", that's not how salaried employment in a market economy works.
Also, punishing management goes against the idea that he's taking all the responsibility here. Wouldn't that just be scapegoating?
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#546> 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…
That’s super pessimistic. What do you want him to say: “sucks all y’all lost your jobs but wasn’t my fault. Haha you’re unemployed now”. Like sure it’s not much, but without owning your mistakes how do you get better and improve to prevent them from repeating?
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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#547"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.
They've lost $10b on the metaverse so far; you'd think you could design a phone at least SOMEWHAT decent for that price, and at least get a TINY foothold back into the market.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#548The 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…
I would argue search is highly valuable.
Also I expect video streaming (of some format, whether it's "traditional living room content" like Netflix/Disney or mobile-first like Youtube or TikTok) to maintain its entertainment dominance during a recession. People like their cheap escapes from the real world. It's been shown time and again that during recessions cheap entertainment like cinema (or these days, video streaming) doesn't die off.
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#549> 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.
E-mail address still working for the day? Is this the standard way to layoff employees in the US?
Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people
#550The 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…
>It is no surprise they are shedding workers when the free money runs out. 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.
It absolutely has. 8 months ago the Fed Funds rate was effectively 0% and now it's 4% and headed higher. That may not mean anything to you, but it means everything to VCs, banks, investors, and the market overall.