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Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

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Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#81

Post by prox »

oxfordmale wrote: post #73
Panini_Jones wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we seen this happen in the past? Did Microsoft go through a general sense of despondency when it cut people in 2009? Did it recover?

This was how Microsoft was seen in 2013 as Ballmer stepped down: "Slumping stock price and unimaginative vision has left Microsoft marooned between a fading past and an uncertain future" An unimaginative vision is a common result of mass lay-offs. The ones that stay behind do not dare to take risks and prefer to stick to the status quo. Only after Satya Nadella took over, did Microsoft start to recover.

So FB / Meta needs a new CEO ?

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#82

Post by aix1 »

oxfordmale wrote: post #77
hnav wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

merging sorted lists is not a leetcode nightmare interview question though, if you can't manage it in an interview, chances are you can't program very well IMO

Normal programmers call the sort() method in their language of choice.

Call sort() to merge two sorted linked lists? (Which is what this sub-thread is discussing.)

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#83

Post by pram »

saagarjha wrote: post #60
jillesvangurp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do. The trick is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Elon Musk got a lot of criticism for how he handled layoffs at Twitter. But he did provide clarity and then ripped off the band aid. Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. IMHO, it wasn't nice but what remains is probably a healthier organization and a fairly stable team. A lot of people left in the process and that was always…

> Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. This was today: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

The cruelty is the point.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#84

Post by al_be_back »

many industries (legal etc) were more productive during covid (WFH), wondering if employee productivity analysis over the lockdown period led to drastic staff reduction.

makes little-to-no sense otherwise to lay off staff en mass as the economies open up, takes ages to re-hire. look at Aviation or Hospitality industries, how they struggled to rehire to keep-up with customer demand when lockdown ended.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#85

Post by pydry »

neilv wrote: post #74
suresk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Twitter has had almost monthly rounds of layoffs, including one a few weeks ago that took out some fairly high profile employees. They also have arbitrary firings and people being let go without being told [1]. I'm certainly not going to argue that Meta is going about this in a good way at all, but it is hard to think of a worse example of doing it "well" than Twitter under Elon. 1. https://twitter.com/iamharald…

Twitter kinda looks like a billionaire decided to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a company, just so he could destroy the livelihoods of thousands of people less fortunate.

Or an attempt to illustrate what happens when $40 billion and a narcissistic personality disorder meets Chesterton's fence.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#86

Post by wetpaws »

prox wrote: post #81
oxfordmale wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was how Microsoft was seen in 2013 as Ballmer stepped down: "Slumping stock price and unimaginative vision has left Microsoft marooned between a fading past and an uncertain future" An unimaginative vision is a common result of mass lay-offs. The ones that stay behind do not dare to take risks and prefer to stick to the status quo. Only after Satya Nadella took over, did Microsoft start to recover.

So FB / Meta needs a new CEO ?

The writing was on the wall since a long time ago.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#87

Post by gymbeaux »

saagarjha wrote: post #60
jillesvangurp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do. The trick is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Elon Musk got a lot of criticism for how he handled layoffs at Twitter. But he did provide clarity and then ripped off the band aid. Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. IMHO, it wasn't nice but what remains is probably a healthier organization and a fairly stable team. A lot of people left in the process and that was always…

> Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. This was today: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

Watching a grown man beg Elon musk for his job on a social media platform is not something I expected to ever see. It's been two weeks- if his paycheck didn't come through, he has his answer. Obviously a s-show led by Elon, but on LinkedIn especially I am seeing a lot of posts where these ex-FAANG employees, who usually score severance measured in months rather than days or weeks, and who were already raking in a $250k+ salary anyway (if you count bonus/RSUs), are so desperate to find another job "ASAP" as to make a post on LinkedIn to... try to get other people to find a job for them? The entitlement is rampant and I see no real difference between this Twitter conversation (if you can call it that) and the posts I frequently see on LinkedIn.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#88

Post by zmmmmm »

Two rounds of layoffs seems to say something that one round doesn't. You would expect that all things being equal there is never a scenario where it is better to do two cuts instead of just one. So why?

a) things were much worse than realised. Maybe but it would have to be a big shock coming because Meta's general performance has held up OK, certainly nothing that would warrant this.

b) HR reasons? some sort of requirement that prevented them doing it all at once? Someone said that this time around they were doing masses of performance reviews. So perhaps the first wave were arbitrary cuts but they couldn't do the second without actual evidence of poor performance backing it?

c) change of plans? Mark wants to go all in AI instead of Metaverse and this means grand restructuring of his whole workforce? You'd think that would be very evident from which teams get laid off (we'll see).

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#89

Post by ivan_gammel »

ithkuil wrote: post #80
Panini_Jones wrote: post #25

I wonder what effects this uncertainty will have on an organizational system. With multiple rounds of layoffs, talks of 'flattening', projects being cancelled, internal transfers being frozen, hiring being frozen, when does an organization finally become 'healthy' again? When are the right people in the right places making the right decisions again? Does an organization that has so much capital need to even care abou…

> hiring being frozen I don't know when they made that decision but a recruiter contacted me from meta last week. I wonder how far do people go through the hiring pipeline before the "stop the engines" signal arrives. Hopefully not after the offer has been accepted.

It may continue for another few weeks after „Stop engines“ signal is received, because recruiters still have their jobs and team leads will tell them: „Let’s keep recruiting funnel warm, while I’m checking if that signal really applies to us“. Until every team with an ambitious team lead is told that they are not special and they really should stop, they may still continue at least talking to people. And some may even got their budget after few rounds of negotiations, so this strategy will make a lot of sense for them.

Re: Meta plans thousands more layoffs as soon as this week

#90

Post by throwawaylinux »

arda_demirtas wrote: post #76
saagarjha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notice how things have gone quiet around Twitter lately. This was today: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

I hate the attitude, the language and the fact that these people are running this world. "Approved, you go ahead" Just drains my energy and hope for the future.

I think Musk is a breath of fresh air from the sterile, managed, corporate-speak drones. He already proved a lot of... "experts" wrong about the imminent implosion of twitter after he got rid of a bunch of people. I'm very interested to see how things go in the next few years. Here's his side of the story on that.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417

I have worked in companies with a lot of dead wood in relatively senior roles. They may have done good work in the past, but they seem to stop doing much actual productive work and instead just kind of insert themselves into important projects and meetings and set about trying to make themselves sound indispensable. Yet they produce very little tangible output and their work can't be explained without vagueness and buzzwords. Leading efforts and driving changes and steering modernization and managing the paradigms, bringing stakeholders together, architecting solutions.

They're hard to get rid of for whatever reason. They've built little fifedoms, they have a reputation, they're very good at hobnobbing with middle management, or other dead wood.

Some orgs absolutely could benefit from a fresh pair of eyes to come in and have people justify their positions, and have the confidence and risk appetite to make some calls.

Now I don't know if Musk is telling the truth here, or anything about that ex-employee, his work or background. He might be a great worker who was well worth his salary in value created for Twitter. He could also be one of the other kinds, that failing orgs desperately need to rid themselves of. His twitter pitch is not highly confidence inspiring.

Twitter allegedly shed about 80% of its staff since Musk took over. Which is frankly staggering that it is still able to operate with 4 in 5 people in the company gone. Maybe that is cutting too far down to the bone but there has been no immediate implosion or collapse. Things still have a long way to play out, but clearly he did not throw darts at a board and fire random people or all the most productive ones if it could get that far.

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