Seems like a lot of CEOs overestimated the speed of AI, but also it is inevitable.
What it boils down to is that speed without direction is at best a waste of time and at worst a recipe for a roadrunner shaped hole in a solid cliff wall. Velocity is a vector, speed is a scalar. AI may help with speed, but it sure as hell doesn't help you move the right way.
Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
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Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#112The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four mon…
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#113I wonder when (if ever) the companies realize that demoralizing your workforce (and destroying that sector of the job market) doesn't have only advantages. I know plenty of people that reacted with the desired fear, putting in long hours to avoid layoffs, willingness to accept lower pay because the job market sucks, etc. - but I think there are also plenty of the the mythical 10x engineers that just checked out, stop…
Using that tool has gotta be a fireable offense, right?
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question wasn't if Zuck has been successful, it was if Meta has succeeded at anything new. When was the last time Meta made something original, brought to market and had success with it?
Instagram Reels? Your measure of “innovation” is just not how large companies succeed. They are specialized at optimization, and take seeds of things and water them. Instagram had 0 revenue and like 13 employees when acquired. WhatsApp had 50 employees, no encryption, etc
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#115"I can’t tell if Zuckerberg is dimwitted or just evil." I'll go with both... I think the guy made some real moves early on, but it's been a while since whatsapp and instagram. And since then, if the tales in Careless People are to be believed, so much smoke has been blown up his digestive endpoint that he's mostly smoke now.
His most innovative move was acquisition
People who innovate without becomming super rich dont get ackwnowledged as innovative. CEO buys or copy an app - innovative.
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#116Conversations he was having “with our top people” when they started planning the restructuring in January and February “were that they were worried that we weren’t going to move fast enough to adapt,” Zuckerberg said.
If Zuckerberg is seeing problems, that means other large tech firms that also followed the siren call of AI transformation and opted to quickly shake things up are likely feeling similar pains.
For instance, Andy Jassy spouted very similar language in his 2025 letter to Amazon shareholders (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and...) which was followed by layoffs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748603).
What have we seen since? Lots of stuff breaking, from seller-focused tech (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions?s...) to cloud services. Amazon now mandates senior engineers to sign off on AI-generated code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323017), even though that will interfere with the mandate to "move fast and operate the like the world's biggest startup."
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#117I wonder when (if ever) the companies realize that demoralizing your workforce (and destroying that sector of the job market) doesn't have only advantages. I know plenty of people that reacted with the desired fear, putting in long hours to avoid layoffs, willingness to accept lower pay because the job market sucks, etc. - but I think there are also plenty of the the mythical 10x engineers that just checked out, stop…
> I think there are also plenty of the the mythical 10x engineers that just checked out I don't think that should be the real fear. The real fear is those 10x engineers still putting in equivalent effort, but now having to spend mental capacity on positioning themselves for future layoffs and worrying about getting fired. I think we greatly underestimate the performance boost there is in security. When you don't have…
Morale problems can be just enough to make your best people pick up the phone when recruiters call.
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#118The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four mon…
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Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#119The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four mon…
his biggest fear is not being the one to nail the next big thing. it happened with mobile, although that was basically irrelevant in hindsight. he thought it was metaverse, which failed, while in the meantime it was actually the new AI cycle, which he was late on / lost by the time llama 4 flopped. i think he’d rather just blow up the whole company than continue to be solely associated with one (or even a few) of the…
Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give your arguments for it not being inevitable if you question it.
Well if it's inevitable, why are we working toward it?