A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs • Hacker News Board

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#21

Post by rolph » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #10

quantumwoke wrote: post #5

For me the big turning point at Meta was the acquisition of Oculus. At the time, it was great, forward-thinking and gave everyone a lot of hope for the future of Meta and even society if you believed the hype. This peaked at about 2020 when the opportunity for VR and remote work became real and necessary due to an unprecedented pandemic. However, we all know the rest; hyperfocus on VR to the detriment of the rest of…

Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings. There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it s…

AR has more utility than VR , and i think telepresence requires elements of both. AR could be used to visually aid a tire change, or display sales specials overlayed on visual of IRL signage

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#22

Post by sashank_1509 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

There has to be some incredible lag in the news media, to be reporting this at this time when Meta managed to almost triple its stock price in less than a year. Meta beat all analyst estimates in its earnings call, whatever Meta is doing it’s working. My only regret is not investing enough into Meta when it was 90$ (Now it’s 240$)

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#23

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

Plus and Windows Phone (and Zune) were decent though. I think they just blundered the launches or marketing.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#24

Post by quantumwoke » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #10

quantumwoke wrote: post #5

For me the big turning point at Meta was the acquisition of Oculus. At the time, it was great, forward-thinking and gave everyone a lot of hope for the future of Meta and even society if you believed the hype. This peaked at about 2020 when the opportunity for VR and remote work became real and necessary due to an unprecedented pandemic. However, we all know the rest; hyperfocus on VR to the detriment of the rest of…

Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings. There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it s…

For a brief moment during 2020, you could see the hype actually meet reality when a wave of VR startups that promised to transport us "as if we were really there" to the office. Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call.

These days, I see it much more commonly used for training purposes now that we are all being forced back to the office.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#25

Post by ZitchDog » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

I agree. There has been tremendous whiplash in the markets. We went from free money and “new paradigms” to QT belt tightening and broken dreams. If people think they could lead better than Zuck, they should start a company and beat him.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#26

Post by monero-xmr » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

muglug wrote: post #20

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

The problem of VR goes beyond hardware innovation: most people don’t want to completely shut themselves off from the world for hours on end.

I have friends that got married, never had kids, and spend large chunks of their free time in MMORPGs, League of Legends, and a seemingly endless array of virtual-based entertainment. They also seem to get a lot of personal meaning and satisfaction from nerd pop culture like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings which is evidence that their rich fantasy lives have such deep meaning for them.

So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world, provided it wasn’t clunky and caused headaches.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#27

Post by kingcharles » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #10

quantumwoke wrote: post #5

For me the big turning point at Meta was the acquisition of Oculus. At the time, it was great, forward-thinking and gave everyone a lot of hope for the future of Meta and even society if you believed the hype. This peaked at about 2020 when the opportunity for VR and remote work became real and necessary due to an unprecedented pandemic. However, we all know the rest; hyperfocus on VR to the detriment of the rest of…

Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings. There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it s…

It will eventually become one of the most significant technologies in history, alongside AI, in my opinion.

People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant.

Mark made the right choice to go balls deep on VR when he did. I don't think he should dial back. When going through hell, keep going.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#28

Post by 908B64B197 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

> Just one or two cycle hardware innovation may make VR successful.

They already achieved something like a 10x cost reduction with the Quest in a few HW generations.

I think their worse mistake was tying up Oculus devices to Facebook accounts. Oculus should have stayed a separate platform with minimal ties to Facebook with it's own social features.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#29

Post by darth_avocado » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18

> Ambitious managers could move up the ladder by proposing projects requiring them to spin up a new team or claim a departing manager’s direct reports. These climbers were privately called “empire builders”... Same at Apple (and same term) when they were flying high after the iPhone success. Apple began that insane period though (perhaps beginning around 2001 or so with the iPod introduction) after having wandered in…

Isn’t that always the case? Management and Administration are the two things that latch on to any organization, bloat it, introduce inefficiencies and then create a career out of trying to solve those inefficiencies.

They ultimately don’t solve them because the way they try to solve it is by hiring more people.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#30

Post by bink » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

Their focus on making Facebook for mobile platforms was smart, their efforts to make a mobile phone were late and substandard. By critical acquisitions I assume you mean Instagram and WhatsApp. Both were anti-competitive attempts to stave off becoming the next MySpace (but also successful). Everything else on the list of acquisitions looks like gambles that did not pay off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Google, Microsoft, and Apple have never bet such a huge chunk of their spending on a single tech that has been so resoundingly mocked. The amount Meta is spending on VR makes the Windows phone look like a drop in the bucket. It's not that they are speculating on a moonshot, it's that they are wasting so much of their money on a single moonshot.