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Meta Layoffs

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231–240 of 282 posts

Re: Meta Layoffs

#231
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…

> But after a period of time, I got it. Sure it took longer, but I got there.

And then you leave the company. So it's not really at all in the best interest of the company for you to take longer to get up to speed.

Average tenure of a SWE is still low across the entire market, at Meta it's probably even lower given who they hire for.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it just shows that the management don't have a clue what they're doing. they just fomo into trends.

probably pretty likely to happen when you've built a company that basically spread misinformation for a profit, things will get pretty confusing.

Pass the popcorn.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#233
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…

Manager in my parlance is heavily working on growing me and the others in my team as well as managing or product portfolio. As others said that sounds like a director. Who runs the day to day off the team. Or do you only sync once a week?

[deleted]

Re: Meta Layoffs

#234

How come layoffs are typically only of FTEs and not contractors? Is it because FTEs and contractors are different types of costs like "personnel" as opposed to "project-based resources"?

I've heard from HR people that, as a rule of thumb, an FTE costs the company 150% of their salary, e.g. if a company pays an FTE $150k in salary a year, they expect to also spend about $75k on that FTE's benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc.) and administrative overhead.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#235

In office culture will die once the emotions abate and the CFO presents to the board a .02 EPS boost by closing all offices. Given the boards fiduciary duty it won’t even be a debate. The “culture” hand wave is ludicrous - a for profit public company isn’t about building culture, it’s about increasing earnings per share. The whole “we need to be in office for the kids” strikes me as absurd as well - we’ve got a 16 ye…

I'm pretty sure that "culture" means "we, the management, like having people around who won't disagree with us to our faces".

Re: Meta Layoffs

#236
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…

> But after a period of time, I got it. Sure it took longer, but I got there. And then you leave the company. So it's not really at all in the best interest of the company for you to take longer to get up to speed. Average tenure of a SWE is still low across the entire market, at Meta it's probably even lower given who they hire for.

> And then you leave the company. So it's not really at all in the best interest of the company for you to take longer to get up to speed.

Maybe it would be in their interest to pay more, so you don't leave. If average tenure of a SWE is low, they are probably switching jobs for better pay. In that case, paying them more to stay makes more sense than having to pay to get a cheaper but unproductive new hire up to speed.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#237
post #162

Meta's problems are due to a lack of direction and very poor decision making from the very top. The Metaverse was a huge expensive failure, their core demographics are old people and their Instagram demographic is being eaten up by TikTok. Zuckerberg is not an "ideas" guy. He had that one great idea back in the early 2000s (whether you believe it was his idea or not, he did execute on it) and everything since then ha…

If the "one great idea" you refer to is a social network, Friendster and Myspace beat Zuckerberg to it by years.

Sure, the concept of a social network wasn't novel, but Zuckerberg had some insights that led to FB becoming the dominant network within a few years - for example incubating inside US colleges to gain traction among younger demographics through word of mouth, building an ecosystem around games and apps, creating a social graph based on real identities and relationships that yielded lucrative marketing data, and so on.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#238
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They built an entire metaverse office with little conference rooms full of avatars. It was comical.

Who doesn't like bringing everything terrible about the real world into the virtual one? Next thing you see they'll be having virtual commutes with virtual cars waiting 40 minutes just to go to your virtual office. But hey it's all metaverse, which means it's awesome and shiny, right?

Pet Theory: It's because of Zuck's security detail/planning.

I remember hearing that his house has 2 foot thick RPG-proof windows, that it's a fortress. He literally has a large degree of optical distortion looking through his windows every morning. Let alone all the crazy stuff, real or imagined, that his security team is telling him.

So, he longs for even simple things like a boring meeting. Like when Michael Jackson closed down a supermarket just so he could go shopping like a normal person would. Same pathos here.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#239
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.

Same with Amazon. The entire business was predicated on the idea of doing a thing online instead of requiring bricks and mortar.

Re: Meta Layoffs

#240
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

out of curiosity, what issues did you see? 20 to one seems kinda low in my experience. At my last deskjob it about 30-50 to 1 and it felt like a good balance. My team and I (~5 people) met with the manager once a week for a couple of hours. Id estimate they had 2-3 meetings a day with other teams. Project direction and blockers were dicussed and adjusted. It felt optimal, enough to get guidance, but they were too bus…

Wow. With 30 to 50 people to 1 manager, the manager is spending 15-25 hrs simply in 30 min employee 1 on 1s every week. That’s an absolutely insane number. That means if they spread it out evenly over the week, they will be spending 3-5 hrs every day on 1 on 1s. In our company we also don’t have purely people managers. Even when I was managing people who were working on projects that had nothing to do with me, I had…

> If I was managing 30-50 people,...

I directly managed 22 people at one point. 1:1s were an every other week affair. While it was possible, it was not sustainable. Keeping track of everyone and their goals & growth, flogging the PM team, running interference with the Sales team, keeping the exec team from interfering, etc. made it far more than a full time job. I was first in the office and last to leave, just so I could get stuff done.

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