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A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#31

Post by jjeaff »

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…

It's easy to look like a visionary leader when people will rewrite history for you. Facebook was famously late to mobile and almost missed the boat. Luckily, they had the resources to plow into catching up around 2012.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#32

Post by quantumwoke »

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…

Industry titans can still make mistakes and it's important to recognise them. The examples you give are decades old. I agree that VR may yet turn around but at the moment needs dictate a pivot in focus.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#33

Post by pipeline_peak »

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.

Also who wants a large pair of goggles strapped to their face? It’s such a chore to take it on and off when you can just look away from a screen.

VR belongs in the 80s

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#34

Post by xwdv »

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…

Don’t know how metaverse stuff will pan out, but Quest 3 should be a pretty big leap forward in VR tech.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#35

Post by roydivision »

monero-xmr wrote: post #26
muglug wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plausi…

You have a few friends != large number of people will do the same.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#36

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

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…

I'm personally still excited to try it for doing actual work. I think we're nearly there in terms of technology. Oculus CV1 was too blurry to read text. The last factor will be all day comfort I think. I like the idea of infinite screen real estate and being able to play proper 3D content is very cool. But.. I still admit not everyone will want to put on a headset even if the tech is great and I don't know how Zuck can change that perception.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#37

Post by jstanley »

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.

100 years ago people would have said the same about having the internet in your house and using the computer of an evening.

In the future, if everything you care about is in VR, then not being in VR would be shutting yourself off from the world, the same as not using the internet is shutting oneself off from the world today (for some of us).

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#38

Post by croes »

xwdv wrote: post #34
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…

Don’t know how metaverse stuff will pan out, but Quest 3 should be a pretty big leap forward in VR tech.

The leaked specs of the Quest 3 don't look like a big leap.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#39

Post by reaperducer »

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…

His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning

Wha? This is revisionist history.

Facebook was very late to having a mobile app. It was widely ridiculed for a very long time for not having an iPhone app, and when it did finally get one, it was so bad that it was practically unusable for at least two years.

I remember a number of friends and family members giving up on Facebook because its app was so slow, bad, and buggy, even on the newest phones. My wife upgraded to a new phone just because the Facebook app was so awful, and she was so disappointed to find out that the problem wasn't the phone, it was Facebook.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#40

Post by monero-xmr »

roydivision wrote: post #35
monero-xmr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plausi…

You have a few friends != large number of people will do the same.

I take the entire breadth of my lived experience when trying to predict the future, and I place high value on anecdata. My strategies have served me well thus far, but if you want to outsource all of your thinking to “experts”, good luck to you.
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