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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

#61

Post by EGreg »

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…

Mark “bet the company on HTML5” ten years ago and backed off later.

Things happen.

The problem is that Meta has too MUCH power.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#62

Post by MikusR »

croes wrote: post #38
xwdv wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

2-3x performance increase is not big?

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#63

Post by deanCommie »

dan-robertson wrote: post #47
JKCalhoun wrote: post #8

> In a statement, Meta spokesman Dave Arnold said the conditions that led to the layoffs are “well known and reverberating throughout the industry.” Sad that you can get away with a statement like that.

Not really sure what you mean by ‘get away with’. Journalists are obliged to ask companies to comment and spokespeople make those comments. The spokesman doesn’t get interviewed or grilled and it is generally left to the reader to interpret the comment and decide if the spokesperson has ‘gotten away with it’. Do you have the same reaction whenever an organisation has a scandal and they ‘don’t want to comment on an on…

Yes. When Donald Trump says something like "As we all know Sleepy Joe Biden eats babies for breakfast", reputable journalistic sources will print it, and will have a sentence somewhere down the line that says "According to the FBI, there is no evidence that Joe Biden consumes human flesh.

Likewise, when a tech C-suite exec makes vague references to macroeconomic conditions, a reputable journalist would include a sentence like "Although rising interest rates have dampened venture capitalist investment into new startups hurting the growth and creation of billion-dollar valuations, the Big Tech companies including Meta have demonstrated continued growth and record profits quarter after quarter, yet still chose to undertake a policy of layoffs self-referencing each other as justification."

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#64

Post by kibwen »

kingcharles wrote: post #27
tsimionescu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR.

True, and it's still entirely reasonable to criticize Facebook on this count, because they have absolutely no plans beyond VR headsets. Any technology to take VR to the next level isn't even a glimmer on the horizon; we are still decades too early.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#65

Post by pyrrhotech »

manojlds wrote: post #14

Stock is doing great, so how bad is it really.

Perhaps it's done great on a YTD basis or since the panic low last Fall, but overall Meta has been a laggard for many years now. A mere 36% return over the last 5 years compared to 66% for SPY and 96% for QQQ. Furthermore, it's still nearly -40% off its peak in September 2021.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#66

Post by irrational »

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…

> So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world

I, on the other hand, know nobody that uses virtual worlds. I find it plausible that a tiny amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world. I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#67

Post by MikeTheRocker »

kibwen wrote: post #54
jstanley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

A future where "everything that you care about is in VR" describes a hellish dystopia. Even in a future where humans spend large amounts of time in virtual spaces, our meat bodies still appreciate going for walks in the park.

The average American spends something like 3 hours per day watching TV, and upwards of 6 hours of total screen time, according to a quick Google search. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine a world where the screens we use are part of a head-mounted display?

Think about any time you've been on a bus, train or plane -- most people on board are using their phones or tablets. I suspect within this decade it's common for those devices to be supplanted by AR/VR headsets.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#69

Post by randomdata »

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…

> Moreover we still don't know how entire VR game will play off

I'm not sure it even matters as it appears the game was really a way to find a funding stream for future hardware development to get them where they really want to go. Kind of like how Netflix mailed DVDs around until they could achieve their goal of a streaming service.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#70

Post by xwdv »

croes wrote: post #38
xwdv wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cheaper, faster, much better optics: any two of those would be good, all three is incredible.
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