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Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

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Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#21

Post by afavour »

rwak12 wrote: post #7

How will the people here who continuously rationalize AI rationalize this? A substantial number of the cheerleaders are financially invested in AI of course, but there are useful idiots, too. You are destroying a profession that was fun and profitable. Don't come with your Luddite and " a subset of us did it to others as well" talking points. Adding numbers wasn't fun, spreadsheets by hand weren't fun. But you are ac…

I don't know that this has a ton to do with AI. Meta has had "fuck around" money for a very long time, the kind of money that let Zuckerberg hire a ton of people to make the Metaverse. And it let a lot of engineers work on things they were passionate about but that don't directly drive profits.

As Meta's stock price falls that fuck around money falls away and people's jobs are suddenly a lot more focused on making the company cash. Of course that's going to make people miserable.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#22

Post by [deleted] »

rwak12 wrote: post #7

How will the people here who continuously rationalize AI rationalize this? A substantial number of the cheerleaders are financially invested in AI of course, but there are useful idiots, too. You are destroying a profession that was fun and profitable. Don't come with your Luddite and " a subset of us did it to others as well" talking points. Adding numbers wasn't fun, spreadsheets by hand weren't fun. But you are ac…

[deleted]

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#23

Post by ninininino »

glaslong wrote: post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Is Zuck just too...neurodivergent or lacking in social awareness or low EQ or whatever the case may be to understand morale? Or just so cut-throat/trusting that people who don't currently work there want the META paycheck badly enough that even if morale is horrible they can just backfill departures?

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#25

Post by jjulius »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

I guess it's a sign of the times. I was just reading the old speech by John Barlow, in another post[0]. Sort of dovetails with this. I spent the majority of my career at a camera manufacturer. I probably made half of what I could have made, anywhere else, and there were lots of issues, caused by bureaucratic overhead, heavy-handed QA, and cultural misunderstandings. But not once, during almost 27 years, did I wonder…

>I probably made half of what I could have made, anywhere else...

Peace of mind over peace of wallet for me, every time.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#26

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #3

This is why companies don't announce layoffs before they know who will be impacted, as frustrating as it can be. My morale would be in the gutter too if I had to spend a month wondering whether I'm the unlucky 1 in 10.

That doesn't really work if you have as many frequent layoffs as Meta has had as everyone will be thinking about it constantly, along with the collapse of one of its major endeavors (Metaverse) and people realizing that the cash bonfire could have been in their pockets instead.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#28

Post by scylla »

rwak12 wrote: post #7

How will the people here who continuously rationalize AI rationalize this? A substantial number of the cheerleaders are financially invested in AI of course, but there are useful idiots, too. You are destroying a profession that was fun and profitable. Don't come with your Luddite and " a subset of us did it to others as well" talking points. Adding numbers wasn't fun, spreadsheets by hand weren't fun. But you are ac…

How will the people who continuously rationalize cars justify that they are destroying a profession - horse carriage driver - that was fun and profitable ?

How will the people who continuously rationalize the Internet justify that they are destroying a profession - travel agents - that was fun and profitable?

If we blocked every possible innovation because it lowered the fun of something existing we'd never have progressed past the Stone Age.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#29

Post by fooker »

maxwellito wrote: post #4

I have a genuine question for Meta engineers: what were you hoping to gain by working at this company? What motivated you, and what were your aspirations?

The usual bet is that you double your salary by tolerating a toxic work environment for a few years.

If you are not in the Bay Area, the absolute numbers might seem unbelievable but here you go - I have seen mid-senior engineers (4-5 years exp) get Meta offers with 700k yearly TC.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#30

Post by kalkin »

rwak12 wrote: post #7

How will the people here who continuously rationalize AI rationalize this? A substantial number of the cheerleaders are financially invested in AI of course, but there are useful idiots, too. You are destroying a profession that was fun and profitable. Don't come with your Luddite and " a subset of us did it to others as well" talking points. Adding numbers wasn't fun, spreadsheets by hand weren't fun. But you are ac…

There are a lot of valid reasons to hate AI, but I don't think "morale of Meta engineers" is a very good one. What were they building? Maybe it was fun--some fun tech seems to have come out of Meta--but what was its social impact? On teenage mental health? On politics and the electorate in the US? On the Rohingya? And they meanwhile they were compensated very well for years.
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