Converting workers to stock buybacks.
Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
291–300 of 506 posts
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#292How long before it finally clicks that facebook/Meta was never more than white privilege, timing, luck, and dumb money? That the concepts were not new and Zuck isn't that innovative or visionary? This goes for all the "Tech Luminaries" and Musk Rats...
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#293Because the AI works so well, or because it doesn't? > ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios. That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.
I'm seeing a lot of frustration at the leadership level about product velocity- and much of the frustration is pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases. My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". There are definitely limits on this, but it's been helpful when dealing with various internal negotiations. I don't spe…
> pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases.
I've never observed facebook to be conservative about shipping broken or harmful products, the releases must be pretty bad if internal stakeholders are pushing back. I'm sure there will be no harmful consequences from leadership ignoring these internal warnings.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I’m not understanding, but why is that wild? Is it just the fact that those people lost jobs? If it were a justification for a re-org I wouldn’t find it objectionable at all
Perhaps I'm being uncharitable but this line "each person will be more load-bearing" reads to me as "each person will be expected to do more work for the same pay".
To me, it's the opposite. I think the words used are not exactly well-thought-through, but what they seem to want to be saying is they want less bureaucratic overhead, smaller teams responsible for bigger projects and impact.
And wanting that is not automatically a bad thing. The fallacy of linearly scaling man-hour-output applies in both directions, otherwise it's illogical. We can't make fun of claims that 100 people can produce a product 10 times as fast as 10 people, but then turn around and automatically assume that layoffs lead to overburdened employees if the scope doesn't change, because now they'll have to do 10 times as much work.
Now they can, often in practice. But for that claim to hold more evidence is needed about the specifics of who is laid off and what projects have been culled, which we certainly don't seem to have here.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
... until reality catches up with a software engineer's inability to see outside of the narrow engineering field of view, neglecting most things that the end-users will care about, millions if not billions are wasted and leadership sees that checks and balances for the engineering team might be warranted after all because while velocity was there, you now have an overengineered product nobody wants to pay for.
You’re on the mark - this is the real challenge in software development. Not building software, but building software that actually accomplished the business objective. Unless of course you’re just coding for other reasons besides profit.
I agree... but not at the engineering level.
This is, IMO, a leadership-level problem. You'll always (hopefully) have an engineering manager or staff-level engineer capable of keeping the dev team in check.
I say it's a leadership problem because "partnering with X", "getting Y to market first", and "Z fits our current... strategy" seem to take precedence over what customers really ask for and what engineering is suggesting actually works.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately there's probably a lot of opportunity for those 600 out there.
While ex-FAIR people should have little problem finding a job, the market for paying research folks that level of TC and working on ambitious research projects, unless you're in a very-LLM specific space, is absolutely shrinking. It certainly feels like the end of an era to see Meta increasingly diminishing the role of FAIR. Strategically it might not have been ideal for LeCun to be so openly and aggressively critica…
Very very few positions for these people to go to. Also, their skills were made obsolete by LLMs.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’ve done this before with their metaverse stuff. You hire a bunch, don’t see progress, let go of people in projects you want to shut down and then hire people in projects you want to try out. Why not just move people around you may ask? Possibly: different skill requirements More likely: people in charge change, and they usually want “their people” around Most definitely: the people being let go were hired when s…
> More likely: people in charge change, and they usually want “their people” around Also, planning reorgs is a ton of work when you never bothered to learn what anyone does and have no real vision for what they should be doing. If your paycheck goes up no matter what, why not just fire a bunch of them, shamelessly rehire the ones who turned out to be essential (luckily the job market isn't great), declare victory reg…
Can you rehire that quickly though? I know where I live the government won't allow you to rehire people you just fired. Because the severance benefits have lower tax requirements and if you could do that you could do it every year as a form of tax evasion.
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Integrating LLMs with the actual business is not a fun time. There are many cases where it simply doesn't make sense. It's hard to blame the average developer for not enduring the hard things when nobody involved seems truly concerned with the value proposition of any of this. This issue can be extended to many areas in technology. There is a shocking lack of effective leadership when it comes to application of techn…
> Integrating LLMs with the actual business is not a fun time. There are many cases where it simply doesn't make sense. “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try and sell it.” — Steve Jobs
[deleted]
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’ve done this before with their metaverse stuff. You hire a bunch, don’t see progress, let go of people in projects you want to shut down and then hire people in projects you want to try out. Why not just move people around you may ask? Possibly: different skill requirements More likely: people in charge change, and they usually want “their people” around Most definitely: the people being let go were hired when s…
VR + AI could actually be kinda fun (I’m sure folks are working on this stuff already!). Solve the problems of not enough VR content and VR content creation tools kind of sucking by having AI fill in the gaps. But it is just a little toy, Facebook is looking for their next billion dollar idea; that’s not it.
You should read https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal.
Even tho the creator says LLMS aren't going in that direction it's a fun read, especially when you're talking about VR + AI.
Author's note from late 2023: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1026612/friendship-is-optima...
Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division
#300Lots of companies spun up giant AI teams over the last 48 months. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if 50+% of these roles are eliminated in the next 48 months. The AI party is coming to an end. Those without clear ROI are ripe for the chopping block.
wishful thinking
Tbh yes. I like AI but I'm getting a bit sick of the hype. All our top dogs want AI in everything no matter whether it actually benefits the product. They even know it's senseless but they need to show the shareholders that they are all-in on AI.
It's really time for this bubble to collapse so we can go back to working on things that actually make sense rather than ticking boxes.