These numbers are completely insane.
Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
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Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#62Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was that the real reason companues failed? By not burning money, instead of burning through it too fast?
Sorry for the late reply. I was being somewhat sarcastic, or maybe not. During the "dot com" era, investors were throwing money at anybody willing to take it, and a start-up was questioned about whether it was maintaining a sufficient "burn rate." In hindsight, it was a speculative bubble. The company that I work for survived that era by not doing those things.
I guess, but if you invested $1 million into 100 companies in 2000 and one of them was Amazon (and other 99 went to zero) your investments combined would have had an annual growth of 24% over the past 25 years.
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#64Meta is so profitable with its ad network it can spend tens of billions of dollars on money-losing losing projects and the stock still keeps going up, and the PE ratio is not that high either. Crazy.
Isn't that what they said about Google/alphabet?
Amazon does this with Jeff Bezos' project Alexa [0].
We really need to start taxing these companies appropriately. Sad that the US treats business better then their own citizens. A business that goes bankrupt can shed their debt while a person goes bankrupt will retain their debt.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/alexa-had-no-profit-...
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, a lot of companies don’t need to keep innovating. But still, TikTok passed Instagram active users. This would be like if Universal theme parks surpassed Disney Parks in revenue. Sure, they can both coexist, but it’s an embarrassing reflection of mismanagement when a company that is so far ahead is surpassed by a competitor with better management working with fewer resources. And there are a lot of examples like…
> "TikTok passed Instagram active users. This would be like if Universal theme parks surpassed Disney Parks in revenue" It's like if a Universal theme park surpassed Disneyland Paris in revenue. Meta has other properties too.
Yes, Meta has other properties:
- Quest was an acquisition (not an original idea) and has been a money sink, VR market is declining.
- Instagram was an acquisition and as mentioned was surpassed in userbase by a newcomer despite cloning TikTok’s functionality relatively early.
- Facebook has a declining userbase. It’s still huge but it’s declining.
- Threads is the most impressive “original” new Meta product in terms of adoption but it’s about half the size of Twitter if not smaller, and growth is reported as slowing. It’s also mostly recruiting the same users who are already in Instagram.
- Meta Workplace got sunsetted and failed
I’m not betting against Meta as I acknowledge that they’re a cash cow, but I think that a better CEO for the company exists and could have done better. I think a better CEO would have beat TikTok, I think a better CEO would have Meta competing in more platforms than just social media, and a better CEO would have been able to maintain a better reputation for privacy and security or at least do a better job of separating Facebook’s reputation from the rest of the company. Something like Meta Workplace was doomed from the start at least in part because companies don’t trust Meta with their sensitive data. That is the CEO’s fault.
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#66The last two paragraphs sure contorted my face into an…interesting expression. I’m confused at how Zuck has proven himself to be a particularly dynamic and capable CEO compared to peers. Facebook hasn’t had new product success outside of acquisitions in at least a decade. The fact that a newcomer like TikTok came and ate Instagram’s lunch is downright embarrassing. Meta Quest is a cash-bleeding joke of a side quest t…
> Facebook hasn’t had new product success outside of acquisitions in at least a decade. Wrong metric to evaluate dynamism and capability. Also the Ray Ban Metas have been pretty successful. They consistently sell out
2 million pairs since 2023, for comparison Nintendo sold 3 million Switch 2 consoles in one day.
And what is the long-term revenue strategy for ray ban meta glasses? You buy the glasses and then what?
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#67The last two paragraphs sure contorted my face into an…interesting expression. I’m confused at how Zuck has proven himself to be a particularly dynamic and capable CEO compared to peers. Facebook hasn’t had new product success outside of acquisitions in at least a decade. The fact that a newcomer like TikTok came and ate Instagram’s lunch is downright embarrassing. Meta Quest is a cash-bleeding joke of a side quest t…
…have you seen $META?
Have you looked up the stock price of Eastman Kodak from 1979?
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#68The last two paragraphs sure contorted my face into an…interesting expression. I’m confused at how Zuck has proven himself to be a particularly dynamic and capable CEO compared to peers. Facebook hasn’t had new product success outside of acquisitions in at least a decade. The fact that a newcomer like TikTok came and ate Instagram’s lunch is downright embarrassing. Meta Quest is a cash-bleeding joke of a side quest t…
I'm a Zuck fan, and I think I could mount a compelling case for that take. But that was not the article to do so. And people can def disagree, there's good arguments on the other side
Imagine being a fan of a billionaire, a state of existence which should not exist.
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#69I guess OpenAI got a good deal at 6.5b for Jony Ive. >Supposedly, Llama 4 did perform well on benchmarks, but the user experience was so bad that people have accused Meta of cooking the books. This is one of those things that I've noticed. I don't understand the benchmarks, and my usage certainly isn't going to be wide ranging as benchmarks, but I hear "OMG this AI and benchmarks" and then I go use it and it's not an…
> I guess OpenAI got a good deal at 6.5b for Jony Ive.
Did they? All I know of Ive's work at Apple is negative: too thin laptops that can't be repaired, uncomfortable keyboards, mice that cannot be used when charging, case designs that cause worse performance, abstract and unnecessarily changing UIs, and calculators that may miscalculate if tapping quickly.
Re: Meta Spends $14B to Hire a Single Guy
#70Obviously false, and now that the author knows it > UPDATE: ... much of the $14b did not go to Alexandr why not change the title as well?
The premise (and headline) isn't that $14 billion went to the one guy; it's that the $14 billion was spent by Meta. It's "Meta spent $14B to...", not "A single guy got paid $14B to..."