Meta lays off 11,000 people • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#721

Post by loeg » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

lafreb wrote: post #116

pmontra wrote: post #41

> At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. This is very similar to the Stripe layoff memo at https://…

Not only the structure, the wording is also identical: "Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history." "Today we’re announcing the hardest change we have had to make at Stripe to date." "At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth." "At the outset of the pandemic in 2020, the world rotated overnight towards e-com…

Same layoff consultants?

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#722

Post by loeg » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #150

CarbonCycles wrote: post #51

I agree. Two very different business responses between Musk and Zuck. I almost feel sorry for Zuck as we are witnessing meltdowns of two large companies in real-time. Musk just continues to dig his own grave… I feel bad for the ppl losing their jobs but that is a very generous severance package.

> meltdowns Huh?. Meta's growth has slowed, but they are a money printing machine. Earnings have gone down because of the enormous bet Zuck has made on the metaverse. Twitter has been barely scraping by for years. The two companies are not really even comparable.

High revenue but the stock is down 74% this year for a reason.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#723

Post by baxtr » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> 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…

Taking responsibility means first of all admitting that you were wrong. Most people never even get to this first step.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#724

Post by commandlinefan » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

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.

> There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse

Yep, was with a company that went out of business slowly - I was one of the last 10 employees to be let go (on the day the company officially went out of business). The first round of layoff severance was something like 6 months of salary. By the time they got down to the last of us, it was two weeks.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#725

Post by hardolaf » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

miiiiiike wrote: post #710

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> 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…

> As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Remember a few years ago when people were asking "Why can't people just say they made a mistake and own up to it instead of shifting blame?" Now that people are taking responsibility for mistakes publicly the response is "Yes, but what does that mean?" Taking responsibility means just that. It means saying you fucked up and…

It sounds like you should pay more for developers because we don't have an issue retaining top talent over in the financial space.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#726

Post by dr_dshiv » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

Leires wrote: post #690

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.

That is such a poor reason to not like Meta, among many, many reasons. All meta did was publish their results. The backlash ensured that no other companies shared results—but AB testing is bigger than ever across the industry.

Now if you had said “fuck meta because my feed is filled with an unintelligible mix of baby photos and political screeds,” I’d totally follow.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#727

Post by itsjustround » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

All the people who failed META's shitty interview's are quietly laughing now. The world is round folks.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#728

Post by nh23423fefe » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

khyryk wrote: post #634

BurningFrog wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means he accepts the blame, and holds no one else responsible. Do people want him to fire himself to show he means it, or what?

People have a problem with it because it's a string of words without meaning. Better to leave it out than to sully modern language further with meaningless gibberish that looks like language.

Pretending not to understand doesn't mean the speaker was unclear.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#729

Post by sagebird » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #586

sagebird wrote: post #395

While many are commenting that these layoffs are sensible given the situation, I am fearful that laying off approximately 13% of Meta employees will lead to a less connected world. I don’t think people fully understand the magnitude of step-backwards it will be in terms of people connecting in this world. Does Zuckerberg take responsibility for what this will mean to people who simply need to connect more through gre…

If this was sarcasm, well done :)

I wouldn’t dare ;)

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#730

Post by matt-attack » Wed, Nov 09, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #709

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?

Per last job report in US, there were two positions for every person finding normal jobs. For IT, I would think that ratio is twice. However, the biggest issue that people have to deal with: (1) Meta paid 2X to 4X higher than regular employers so that’s massive pay cuts for the folks, (2) they lost the unvested stock aka their hold out compensation of past 4 years they worked for. So, this would be huge financial set…

I googled but I see zero references to "hold out" compensation. Is that actually a term?