A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs • Hacker News Board

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#161

Post by grumbel » Mon, May 01, 2023, 10:48 AM UTC

serf wrote: post #126

irrational wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would. there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world. A good percentage of that are partaking in games that easily qualify as virtual worlds. no personal anecdote needed, huge amounts of people are already spending time in places that qualify as virtual worlds. Our interfaces are clunky, and you can shift 'virtual world' around to mean something else, b…

> there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world.

I don't think casually playing a mobile game every once in a while translates to going full VR. The amount of gamers that care enough about the medium to buy a console or gaming PC is only around 500 million or so.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#162

Post by croes » Mon, May 01, 2023, 10:54 AM UTC

MikusR wrote: post #143

croes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2-3x performance in 3 years isn't a big leap

Average yearly performance increase is about 20% at best. And closer to 10%

I think if we get a big leap performance wise it will be from Apple. The performance/power consumption could be a game changer for VR/AR.

Meta is too dependend on chip manufacturers like Qualcomm

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#163

Post by qwytw » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:01 AM UTC

catiopatio wrote: post #139

dboreham wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't start the smartphone market. There were smartphones for many years prior to the iPhone.

Apple started what we would recognize as the modern smartphone market. Before that, we had things like the danger hiptop and blackberries. Incomparable.

Windows Mobile was more advanced compared to the initial iPhone in almost every way (to be fair it wasn't a particularly useful device on launch). Of course the whole is more than just a sum of it's parts.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#164

Post by grumbel » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:03 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #112

CamperBob2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jaron Lanier made an incisive point many years ago. Someone asked him what virtual reality was. "Virtual reality is where you are when you're on the telephone." I'd extend that to, "Virtual reality is where you are when you're not present in the here-and-now." That encompasses all forms of media, entertainment, and communication with people who aren't in the room with you. The idea that it has anything to do with gog…

I don’t think Lanier is right, regardless, virtual reality and immersive virtual world still sound like two different things.

I can see the point in Lanier argument, however there is a much bigger problem for VR: There is no VR analog to Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube and Co. VR is still very much an activity in which you have to actively engage, you have to find a game that is interesting, load it up and play. You can't just casually doom-scroll in VR and have the algorithm find interesting content for you. There is no app for that. And the retention rates of VR aren't great either, as once you are done with a game, it's quite difficult to find whatever you'll do next.

For all the hype around Metaverse and Zuckerberg wanting 1 billion people in VR, there has been surprisingly little effort in finding out what those people would actual do when they have the headset on.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#165

Post by qwytw » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:06 AM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #37

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.

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).

For every success story comparable to the "internet" there are dozens or way more technologies and ideas which led nowhere.

To be fair it's not that I'm doubting VR in general just Facebook's vision (or lack of one) of what the Metaverse is supposed to be.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#166

Post by qwytw » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:07 AM UTC

davnn wrote: post #79

reaperducer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ba…

They were betting on web technologies instead of native, which was quoted as early Mark Zuckerberg's biggest mistake [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our-bigges...

Technically Apple made the same mistake but realized and mostly fixed it in half a year or so.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#167

Post by qwytw » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:12 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #107

cesarb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate: a lot of your requirements become easier if you allow for tethering to one or more devices on your belt, or even on a backpack, through a discreet cable behind the ear. The hardest part is probably #4 (the lenses and projector) combined with #1 (looking normal).

My initial reaction is "that cable would have to be pretty darn discreet"—but I suppose wired headphones became normalized enough. I feel like there's an inherent difference in level-of-weirdness when the cable is attached to something on your eyes versus your ears, but maybe culture would adapt. Personally, I wouldn't want to bet my company on it.

> headphones became normalized enough

Aren't they quite weird again nowadays? And I'd be exceptionally surprised if any device Apple released required a wired connection instead of Wifi

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#168

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, May 01, 2023, 11:37 AM UTC

qwytw wrote: post #167

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial reaction is "that cable would have to be pretty darn discreet"—but I suppose wired headphones became normalized enough. I feel like there's an inherent difference in level-of-weirdness when the cable is attached to something on your eyes versus your ears, but maybe culture would adapt. Personally, I wouldn't want to bet my company on it.

> headphones became normalized enough Aren't they quite weird again nowadays? And I'd be exceptionally surprised if any device Apple released required a wired connection instead of Wifi

> Aren't they quite weird again nowadays?

Nah, I still see wired headphones all the time around Manhattan.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#169

Post by gmerc » Mon, May 01, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

srj wrote: post #101

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.

Our leadership had no vision beyond doubling down on VR and doing a complete copy and paste of TikTok. Meanwhile our middle managers hired as many people as possible to justify their own promotions, as everyone is too lazy to consider impact beyond # of reports and there's no accountability. Finally, due to the above, we laid off many ICs. I guess that's what he meant?

Lol middle managers. The headcount games were VPs. How do you think headcount was distributed, by middle managers?

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#170

Post by sp527 » Mon, May 01, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

sashank_1509 wrote: post #22

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$)

Prediction: generative AI is going to obviate the status signaling value of social media and quickly render it a pointless exercise, with attendant attrition. People are severely underestimating the impending psychological impact of social media achieving essentially the apotheosis of frictionless fakery. Meta is in huge trouble and so are its investors.