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Meta Layoffs

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Re: Meta Layoffs

#61

Post by radicaldreamer »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #46
nostromo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other deep irony is that many tech companies ruined the office by forcing open office designs. It was no secret that employees found them difficult places to be productive. And now they wonder why nobody wants to go there.

One counter argument to this take is: If cube farms or offices with doors are so much better, where are the companies without open-offices and outsized performance financials. I suspect most employees just aren't that productive for it to matter much. There is probably some small percentage who are more productive, and even fewer who are much more productive, but their needs are overwhelming by larger business decisi…

Apple

Re: Meta Layoffs

#62

Post by Dalewyn »

unmole wrote: post #53
Dalewyn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just give it another 10 to 20 years and the next generation of the workforce will introduce cubicles as a monumental innovation in office design technology.

Been there, done that: https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-metas-push-to-solve-the-...

Well then: Give it another 30 to 40 years and cubicles will come back thrice again.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#63

Post by RestlessMind »

bink wrote: post #42
djha-skin wrote: post #29

His poignant take on weekly remote work is being wrestled to the ground stick me the most: > To me, although I’d certainly concede that WFH pares down meeting culture and certainly has benefits in logistics, it’s always been fairly obvious that in-person collaboration is more effective, produces a much stronger culture, and I suspect is important especially to larger orgs because it helps to even out performance. Hig…

I'd argue that that doesn't have to be the case. The companies that are failing their junior employees and new hires are doing so not because they are remote/WFH, but because those companies did not invest the energy and resources necessary to be good at remote/WFH. There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance.

> There are plenty of companies that focus on remote work and have no issues with onboarding or failing performance.

Can you please name a few of those? Mine has gone all in and sincerely trying to make it work. And it still sucks. So curious to know some successful examples.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#65

Post by yellowapple »

zamadatix wrote: post #17
yellowapple wrote: post #5

> > Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis…

> This is meaningless without knowing how productivity is being measured. It's very possible that said metric inherently favors in-person collaboration over remote collaboration - which would then skew the results of any further analysis of that metric. Why is it supposed to be problematic for the metric to favor or skew towards one over the other? The goal of the metric should be to measure something the company wan…

> Why is it supposed to be problematic for the metric to favor or skew towards one over the other?

It's akin to asking whether a weightlifter or a marathon runner is more athletic. If I'm measuring athleticism by one's max jogging distance, that'll disproportionately favor the runner. If I'm measuring athleticism by one's single-rep max deadlift, that'll disproportionately favor the weightlifter.

This ain't problematic per se; I might have good reason for measuring athleticism by a skewed metric (for example, because I'm the coach of a track & field team and therefore need runners more than I do weightlifters). However, if that was the case then I'd probably be explicit about that when presenting my findings rather than simply using running distance as a proxy for general athleticism.

Likewise, Facebook might have good reasons to use metrics that inherently prefer in-person work and/or exclude metrics that inherently prefer remote work, but without knowing what those metrics even are (let alone why they were chosen), it's impossible to say whether findings based on those metrics are actually applicable to any organization other than Meta as it exists at this very moment.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#66

Post by ipaddr »

aestetix wrote: post #7

I just have to point out the irony that a company which believes so much in virtual work that they renamed themselves after the "metaverse" is now thinking to require employees to return to the office.

If the company who creates the metaverse can't make it work for them the entire metaverse workplace is doomed to the zune trash bin

Re: Meta Layoffs

#67

Post by 8note »

colmvp wrote: post #58

> > Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis…

> I'll say this: If these companies tanked during the height of Covid, they'd blame it on WFH. Of course, the financial performance for these companies was quite good, so now that there's a bit of correction, they search for reasons to bring employees back to the office.

What's entertaining is that the various faang companies performance is likely unrelated to employee performance, and Elon musk's twitter will show a path forward for near-term tech employment

Re: Meta Layoffs

#68

Post by peyton »

geokon wrote: post #59
flashgordon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a team that is meeting their manager consisting only of 5 people if the manager has 30-50 people reporting into them? I wasn't sure if it was a typo or where you actually advocating for a manager to have 30-50 direct reports?

Yes. The manager managed 6+ teams. They had decades of industry experience and were very good at.. Management? dealing with project scope, knowing what clients would find useful, when to change direction etc. Managing a team is realistically not a full time job. He did not write any code or independently make technical decisions nor act as a mentor or senior dev or anything like that. He used to write code, so could…

That’s a director.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#69

Post by RestlessMind »

AHOHA wrote: post #60

I just never understood how come “tech” companies never used the same concept used within their products, async communications!! Sync communication is a blocking one, you need to block all involved parties to discuss X that most of the times is useless, just use async ones, I email/text/or even video record when I have the time, and you respond when you do, not really that hard!

Because a lot of work needs sync and is inefficient to do in an async manner. Even for software engineers, let alone other people centric roles. Most obvious example would be designing nuances of a complex system. That discussion is needed at least once every 4-6 weeks and I wish we are around a whiteboard at that time.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#70

Post by geokon »

peyton wrote: post #68
geokon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The manager managed 6+ teams. They had decades of industry experience and were very good at.. Management? dealing with project scope, knowing what clients would find useful, when to change direction etc. Managing a team is realistically not a full time job. He did not write any code or independently make technical decisions nor act as a mentor or senior dev or anything like that. He used to write code, so could…

That’s a director.

i guess its semantic。。do you meet your director every week for several hours?

I'm genuinely curious bc it was my one and only proper deskjob. Every other corporate structure sounds like office space

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