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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

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481–490 of 923 posts

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#481

Why would any candidate consider Meta for their career when the CEO flounders money and then lays off recklessly.

90% of employees aren't getting laid off and continue to earn top of market pay. Even if you think layoffs are distributed randomly (they aren't), that has positive EV.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be fine if they are offering incredible pay and conditions at a highly desirable company. But you get so many mid tier companies looking at Apple and Google and replicating their process without the pay or reason to put up with that process. I just eject from the interview process when I hear it's going to be so many rounds because I know there will be another company that's just as good that will get it d…

I had a 6 interview + take home ( which realistically took 2 days because I intensively studied for it ) loop. Didn’t get the job. Got the vibe they were full of crap anyway. The salary range was never given. The business model, extremely easy to replicate. The job I’m at now had a single 30 minute chat. Verbal offer 2 days later. And my co workers and boss are awesome.

Most of the best places I've worked have had the least process.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#483
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all true but the cafeteria is generally outsourced. Those employees are not on the books of the real enterprise and the software shared between all of the outsourcers customers. Same goes for many non-core functions.

I can confirm for a certain very large enterprise that this is not the case. The employees ARE on the books of the company and considered full time employees with full benefits, and the software is custom built for this enterprise, by this enterprise, and not shared with any other enterprises

I feel better working at a company when the support staff are also working for the same company.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#484
post #472

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

3 and a half ways AI takes jobs: 1. By making workers unnecessary (largely hypothetical right now?) 2. By companies spending big on AI, but it didn't pay off yet so they need to cut back on something else. 3. AI is a good excuse for layoffs they want to do anyway. Also - the investors would rather hear "AI" than "oops we are in trouble so we need to do layoffs". For example, if you spent a lot of billions on a 2nd li…

4. When the whole thing implodes, because at that point you need to keep the balance sheet as green as possible.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#485
post #431
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking responsibility doesn't mean paying people to do nothing.

Is he going to pay the severances out of pocket? Is he going to personally help those employees get back on their feet? Is he going to make sure their families are ok? Is he stepping down? What does it look like besides cheap talk from a cheap and clueless leader? The guy is just another mediocrity who tripped into a huge pile of money and now it’s everyone’s problem while he acts as a giant baby.

I think you're more upset about this than the typical Meta employee. Judging by... vibes, the main reason they aren't taking volunteers for these layoffs is that they might get more than 10% champing at the bit to take the severance.

The 2022 RSUs at Meta have more than doubled since the grant price, and are mostly vested out now, ending Feb 2027, after which there will be a steep TC decline for people employed since 2022, especially those on an initial grant or with very good performance for that refresher. There are a good portion of people sitting on either FIRE or at least extended funemployment amounts of money that the severance is looking mighty tempting to.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an entire desktop OS and desktop software suite in pretty much all categories to compete with Microsoft. Also their hardware business is roughly 50-100X the size of Google's hardware business in scale and distribution. The headcount analog for Google is Apple. And if you subtract out the retail employees Apple looks surprisingly efficient, having much less non-retail staff than Google (although both heavily use c…

It's been more than a few years since I worked at Apple, but they were always unique in the tech space in that their retail division dwarfed headcount. If I recall correctly all of OS X Lion was produced by around 3,000 engineers (and probably less, since I think that count included iLife and iWork).

Aren’t they sort of unique in that they… have a retail division, as a real ongoing thing (I’m sure MS tried an MS store but I’ve never seen one).

Well, unique other than Amazon I guess.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they bought Insta and Whatsapp. I mean, that's not nothing, buying a successful business and keeping it successful for over a decade. But neither Zuck nor Meta made those platforms; they were both established successes in their own right before acquisition.

This is the case with most tech companies. Google bought Android, YouTube, DoubleClick, Maps, etc. etc.

Although in this case Meta bought companies that were already established and successful.

Google bought Android before it had released products.

Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#488
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s go another step further! The continual success of fb and instagram has not come from zuck but through glorified A/B testing on steroids whilst lighting employee’s asses on fire each quarter to move the metrics. Visionary genius? My ass. Only Steve Jobs proved he is worthy of that title. Bro is a fraud. He always was - remember he stole the idea for fb. Thankfully he’s getting found out.

i argue that most ideas aren't necessary novel, so stealing idea isn't necessary bad.... e.g. i don't think google search was entirely novel, but was well executed. honestly - meta has built quite a lot of cool things, but c-suite is probably to be blamed for what's going on today.

Search was not novel, but PageRank was novel.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#489
post #476

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

Yeah, this is a justification, but still -- they save single digit billions doing this, while AI capex is $150B (same timeframe) and RL spend is $16B. Feels like you could make the same cut from AI capex and barely notice a difference.

Doing slightly less than 150b looks bad to investors. Or at least it looks small.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#490
post #476

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

Yeah, this is a justification, but still -- they save single digit billions doing this, while AI capex is $150B (same timeframe) and RL spend is $16B. Feels like you could make the same cut from AI capex and barely notice a difference.

Imagine the productivity gains if they just spent $150B on booze and cake for employees!
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