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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

ericlippert.com

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Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#81

Post by woah »

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”.

Sounds like this guy was totally opposed to the company's new focus, to the point of describing it in derisive terms. Seems like letting him go was the best thing for everyone, and maybe it was judged that his team wouldn't be able to continue successfully without him.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#82

Post by kneebonian »

greesil wrote: post #30
nightski wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an insightful assessment. Not everyone in a company can be top line. But I also think there's a lot more opportunity in using statistics/ml/data science in the top line than most companies practice.

But that would lead to accountability...

This is the real problem. Visibility is to be abhorred at the top levels because viability brings accountability. How many Dilbert comics are there out there with the punchline being "I don't care what the real numbers are these are what I want the numbers to be" from the PHB

There is a large swathe of middle and upper management that gets by due to continually making sure their actual impact is never measured, and they are only a "force multiplier." not that you should do away with middle management, but there are many in middle management who could be done away with, with very marginal loss.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#83

Post by trenchgun »

gknoy wrote: post #79
moloch-hai wrote: post #72

To Management, you are either in a Cost Center or a Profit Center. In all advertising-supported monstrosities, only adtech and sales are profit centers. Literally everything else is a cost center. Everyone at Facebook and Google is in a Cost Center if they are not directly involved in landing advertising accounts, presenting ads, or billing for ads. Never look for work in a Cost Center. Come hard times, Cost Centers…

> billing for ads is in a Cost Center. I've only briefly worked closely with a billing team, but my impression was always that billing is seen less as a cost center, but more as a critical "without this team we get no money" team, which seems closer to a profit center. I'm not sure how far up the management team that perspective stays true, though.

Full quote: "Everyone at Facebook and Google not directly involved in landing advertising accounts, presenting ads, or billing for ads is in a Cost Center."

You read it wrong.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#84

Post by athrowaway12 »

johnfn wrote: post #57
vikingerik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world are you getting from $250k salary to $1M total cost? Stuff like office space and equipment/services, health insurance, HR overhead are constants per person, they don't scale up with salary. Are you assuming that some big bonus or grant package is necessary?

Facebook employees make a lot more than 250k. Someone with Eric lippert’s level of experience probably makes well over 600-700k in total compensation - just see levels.fyi!

A big portion of the comp especially at higher levels is in stock grants... and Meta stock just dropped 75% in value this year.

These grants are valued at the market price at time of hire (or refresh).

So maybe pre-2022 the comp was 700k...

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#85

Post by blitz_skull »

woah wrote: post #81

> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. Sounds like this guy was totally opposed to the company's new focus, to the point of descri…

Just staring at facts on paper... It sounds like Facebook has no interest in cutting costs since they cut a team that reduced the cost of every single team they interacted with. By a large multiple of whatever it cost to have that team employed.

Regardless of your take on the "Metaverse", it's clear that this was in fact, not the best thing for everyone.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#86

Post by pixl97 »

brutus1213 wrote: post #40
apohn wrote: post #3

I work in the field of Data Science and one upsetting reality has started to sink into my mind over the last year. In a business there is top line and bottom line. There are a lot Statistics/ML/Data Science jobs that are about moving that bottom line. You build something to optimize something to reduce costs. The value provided by the bottom line people is less visible than the value of top line people. The easiest w…

I understand the top-line bottom-line divide, but I am not fully convinced if the top-line projects are any safer. Wouldn't another reasonable business strategy be to get rid of all new projects, and only focus on operations-as-is during times of economic uncertainty?

That depends if you're about to get ate by your competitions new product

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#87

Post by stonogo »

echelon wrote: post #56
kikokikokiko wrote: post #37

"Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”." This is so true. Facebook must die.

I'm not a fan of Meta, but they're doing the cutting edge research in VR/AR that nobody else is [1]. Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... They're going to own this space for decades to come, and everyone will license from them. It may seem impr…

The detail they have failed to pay attention to is "what the hell good does this do anyone." Still.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#89

Post by function_seven »

time_to_smile wrote: post #77
sp332 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the team is costing less than $10 million/year, it still makes less sense to let them go.

It's not hard for a team at Meta to easily cost more than $10 million/year. Average TC for each IC could reasonably have been in the 500k/year area and that doesn't count other benefits/infra overhead. A few very senior people on the team could easily have pushed the average TC up quite a bit. So if the team was around 20 people that already doesn't make sense.

This post notes that the savings were net of cost. Maybe Eric is wrong, but assuming his math checks out, cutting a team that delivers net savings can’t be justified on the basis of cost-cutting.

Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned

#90

Post by runevault »

time_to_smile wrote: post #77
sp332 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the team is costing less than $10 million/year, it still makes less sense to let them go.

It's not hard for a team at Meta to easily cost more than $10 million/year. Average TC for each IC could reasonably have been in the 500k/year area and that doesn't count other benefits/infra overhead. A few very senior people on the team could easily have pushed the average TC up quite a bit. So if the team was around 20 people that already doesn't make sense.

Except he specifically said millions of dollars a year "over the cost of the work". They were a net bonus on the balance sheet.
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