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Meta lays off 11,000 people

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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#591

It's wild to me that a CEO can simultaneously take responsibility for the decision to over hire, and also suffer none of the financial consequences. In fact, META stock is up 7% on this news, so Zuck has made money on this decision. I think that's a major inefficiency in modern corporations. Executives are the last to face consequences when they make a bad decision.

if you think stock up means zuck made money for this (good) decision, then you've got to admit stock being down 50% during the last year was zuck loosing money based on his previous (bad) decisions..

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#592
post #455

"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.

It takes balls to do what The Zuck is doing. Facebook is stagnant and dying. It's being chipped away by Tiktok and neutered by Apple's monopoly.

He could ride the facebook ship into the sunset and have it die 20 years from now.

But no, he's betting big and going for broke. I hope he succeeds just for the sheer stones he's displaying. Really inspiring to see a man aim so high.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#593
post #245

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.

I have been through a couple of merges and layoffs, it taught me that what matters is loyaty to the team, employer not so much.

It depends. In a lot of layoffs your manager themselves will find out the same morning and will have no say in the decision.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#594
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…

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…

They lay people off, because companies always want to lay some people off, and doing so in normal times is even less palatable. Employees are not fungible, and some employees are worth to companies less than the company wants.

This is not to say that every single person being laid off is of low value, that’s not true. It’s just it is hard to lay off only low performers, some average or even good performer will always be collateral damage. But, overall, if you want well-performing companies to not do mass layoffs on recession, the only way is to make it more palatable to people to see mass firings in good times.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure."

For someone who barely ever worked an office job, Mike Judge is an expert at portraying office space.

A number of us were convinced Judge just hung out in a booth at Applebees and local bars in Austin and wrote down everything we were saying.

Living in Richardson explains Beavis and KotH.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would him taking responsibility in practice look like to you?

Taking a salary cut. Loosing unvested options. Fewer grants going forward. Financial penalties that incentivize him to not fuck up again.

Zuckerberg takes a $1 salary and no equity compensation.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#597

Facebook ("Meta") made $46.7 Billion in Profit in 2021. They have $42 Billion in cash. If the average engineer is paid $150k then these 11k people would cost the company 150,000 x 11,000 = 1,650,000,000 ($1.6 Billion/year) Mark Zuckerberg could _easily_ afford to keep these people employed and focus their efforts towards improving the safety of the platform e.g: stopping Human Trafficking, Drug Dealing and Child Abus…

>If the average engineer is paid $150k

Haha.

It’s more like twice this, with another ~50% in overhead costs like healthcare, payroll taxes, real estate, etc.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#598
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…

> but everyone with half a brain knew it wasn't sustainable.

Did you short all these companies and are currently a billionaire? Since it took only half a brain to know.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#599

Facebook 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"?

The Localverse isn't defendable in anyway. People don't use Facebook pages/groups because it's "Facebook". They use it because it's adjacent to something else they do.
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