Meta lays off 11,000 people • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#681

Post by lovich » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #283

jghn wrote: post #266

Earlier 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" .

He wasn’t criticized for having empathy, he was criticized for the narcissistic attempt to make the layoffs all about how his emotions.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#682

Post by fy20 » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

whatwherewhy wrote: post #52

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?

In the small central EU country where I live, that wouldn't even saturate the open programmer positions - just about 1/10 of it. I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in any measurable way. If anything this just means these people will be working on more different products, and that means more opportunities for even more programmers in the future.

Similar here. Over the summer my country of 3m people, reached its yearly immigration quota in tech jobs of 16,000. And that doesn't include people moving inside the EU or refugees from Ukraine.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#683

Post by sytelus » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #670

I worked at Facebook when covid first hit. Zuckerburg treated everyone in the company very, very well. There was a blanket "don't worry about performance, take care of your families" guarantee that honestly was an enormous help. The thing that particularly struck me though was the way he handled contract workers like (some of) the kitchen staff, cleaners, etc. These people don't work for Facebook and he had zero obli…

I am particularly sad about current state of Meta. Regardless of what people think of Facebook and Zuck, he was unapologetically a hacker. I visited FB campus few times and emphasis on hacker culture everywhere was just immensely delightful. He knew the value of good hacker and raised bar for the compensation across the entire industry. Ship your code today was absolutely refreshing. Number of open source projects that has came out of Meta is unparalleled for number of employees. MetaAI had been well protected and is one of the strongest engine for progress in AI. I always viewed it as a company run by a hacker for hackers.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#684

Post by stillametamate » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

obert wrote: post #646

The fact that the company is still investing in the development of the metaverse, while letting go of thousands of employees, may not sit well with some... this could be just "I was wrong, part 1"

Zuck made it very clear in the last earnings call that he's committed to the metaverse. The stock price is up a lot of the layoffs, but I don't think it's sunk in that that they cut elsewhere.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#685

Post by apineda » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

sausagefeet wrote: post #631

adrianmsmith wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1590304422735015936 was a good explanation: > What this means is they don’t blame outside factors. Compare this w layoffs where the CEO says this is due to “the economy” “the macro climate”, suggesting they did everything right. When someone says they take accountability, it means it was their poor decisions - that could have/should have been better - that led to…

This is a pretty poor take, IMO. I have not seen any difference in results of a CEO who "takes responsibility" vs "blames outside factors". Taking responsibility seems to be a cheap way to come off as a better person without actually doing anything differently.

I understand this take but it seems to assume that people and systems aren't flawed.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#686

Post by itissid » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

From the immigration H1b PoV looks of it a few months of severance and then there is 60 days when the clock starts ticking to find a job. Not bad.

From what I understand the people where the WARN act is active they have to give atleast 60 day notice in case of mass layoffs(this is different from the 60 day grace period for H1bs to transfer status).

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#687

Post by bagels » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

eyear wrote: post #543

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.

Not necessarily: I know companies paid 2 weeks/year in the first round and 3 weeks/year in the second round a year later.

Sounds like everyone got a weak deal.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#688

Post by skizm » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #666

Meta is burning $10B/yr to build Metaverse. They are also loading up on massive debt. This is the part I don’t understand. Development is expensive but NOT this expensive! A back of the envelope calculation suggests that one can build an entire search engine infrastructure and product for the same price. Something like HoloLens from scratch would cost LESS than half of that price. A full competitive self driving E2E…

This is completely incorrect. They took on ~$10B in debt recently for stock buybacks when debt was cheap. They make around $28B in profit after metaverse spending and have $40B cash on hand.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#689

Post by code_duck » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

bmm6o wrote: post #525

mattmaroon wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, like Musk's Tesla holdings, he couldn't sell a significant portion of those without reducing the value of what he retained.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#690

Post by Leires » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me to never use their services. I hope they implode as a company. I happily said no when people from meta approached me on LinkedIn.