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Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

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Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why TF does everyone want to be in Texas heat or not be able to go outside?

One aspect that intrigues me is it's well positioned to take advantage of solar power. I think solar capacity is growing faster than any state and it's behind only California now? I live in Chicago and just got finished with a 10F degree week, and I was sitting there feeling bad about how much natural gas my house was burning to stay warm. There are plenty of weeks here, where I have to raise the temperature in the h…

In the cold, you can always put on more layers.... in the heat, you're basically sol

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's keeping LeCun at Meta at this point. I can imagine he's not happy with Zuck's capitulation. I'm sure you're right that if he decided to leave he'd easily be able to get funding. I'm sure France would be willing to set him up with an AI research lab to get him back there. And there would be plenty of other companies/labs that would be trying to get him.

> I'm sure France would be willing to set him up Are you familiar with realities of incorporating a startup in the EU?

In the UK it costs £12 and takes 5 minutes. It costs between £300-600 per year for an accountant to file your accounts, and £12 for your confirmation statement.

And did when we were part of the EU.

Cheaper and quicker than America.

You don't incorporate in the EU, you incorporate in one of the 27 different countries.

All have wildly different requirements.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#103
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be pretty embarrassed to be working for someone who kissed the ring like Zuck did on Jan 20.

And it was already embarrassing for a myriad of reasons before that including how he went on Joe Rogan talking about how corporations need more "masculine energy". In the hobbies I participate in (notably I'm not in a major tech hub) some of these tech companies are getting a similar social stigma to like finance (and this is especially pronounced among women I know who really don't like what they view as "tech bros"…

Indeed, I think the inauguration was kind of Zuck's "pedo guy" moment, where the pieces fell into place and a whole bunch of people at once were like... oh, yes, okay I see what is actually the state of things here.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#104
post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

> the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers

I understand that people don't like any talk about layoffs and performance management, but I've never worked at a company where being in the bottom 5-10% of performers meant your job was safe. I've also never worked at a big company that didn't have at least 1-in-20 people who were clearly underperforming and everyone around them knew it.

I know the real complain is that he said it out loud and people don't like threats. However, Meta employees are highly compensated, especially now that the stock price is extremely high. I don't really think it's unreasonable for a company that compensates well and has generous severance packages to be cutting the bottom 5% of their workforce.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#105

Seems like a lot of Californians are feeling insecure about this kind of news. Maybe its time to re-evaluate why this is happening instead of lashing out. California is a beautiful state with great weather, it has some of the most important trade and transit hubs in the west, and a robust education system. There's no reason we can't turn this around, almost all of our issues are governance related problems.

Meta isn't incorporated in California.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#106
post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

I'm not sure what's keeping LeCun at Meta at this point. I can imagine he's not happy with Zuck's capitulation. I'm sure you're right that if he decided to leave he'd easily be able to get funding. I'm sure France would be willing to set him up with an AI research lab to get him back there. And there would be plenty of other companies/labs that would be trying to get him.

I've seen him on record that he'd pretty much work for whoever pays him (in the context of research grants for military). Virtue signaling to feel good is only worth so much to people. Humans compartmentalize very well.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#107
post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

> a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. This is a pessimistic interpretation of Mark's words that has been trumpeted in the media. Which I am appalled to admit. He said that they anticipate the majority of new code to come from AI models rather than human engineers. He then adds that they expect developers to be augmented by these tools.…

> you still need somebody to drive the AI and validate or correct their outputs

100% visual inspection catches only about 80% of the defects.

The following is a classic example from QC circles (I used to run incoming QC at a medical device factory). Count the number of F’s in the paragraph below:

> THE NECESSITY OF TRAINING HANDS FOR FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FRIENDLY FARM LIVESTOCK IS FOREMOST IN THE MINDS OF FARM OWNERS. SINCE THE FOREFATHERS OF THE FARM OWNERS TRAINED THE FARM HANDS FOR THE FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM LIVESTOCK, THE OWNERS OF THE FARMS FEEL THEY SHOULD CARRY ON WITH THE FAMILY TRADITION OF TRAINING FARM HANDS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM STOCK BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE BASIS OF GOOD FUTURE FARMING.

How many did you get?

The correct answer is four dozen (I wanted to make the number harder to calculate before you count them).

Having software devs become some sort of QC inspectors for AI code sounds like a fucking nightmare to me, and I know how much of a nightmare QC in a factory is and how many defects escape both the design and the manufacturing process even with very strict QC.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#108
post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

> Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him.

Of course not. Quantifiably so. Proof: he can get all of them for comparably measly salary to his net worth. He has.

(P.S. Besides, you'd be surprised how replaceable such people are. Often at these companies who can hire high quality talent at lower levels you are going to see impressive people step up when the old wash away, so it might actually be the opposite.)

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#109
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All 3 of them are unaccountable to anyone. In what way are they unaccountable to anyone? Their wealth is tied up in stock whose value is tied to the perception, aka the accountability, of the general public. Not being able to personally destroy someone's wealth because you don't like what they're doing is different from being unaccountable. If tomorrow Zuck released an AI model or FB feature that was deeply unpopula…

Zuck has majority voting shares, so can't be fired. Sam already proved that nobody at OpenAI can get him out, and the new board makes that even harder. Same for Elon. No matter what happens, all 3 will be billionaires for the rest of their lives.

Nothing you said refuted the point made.

Re: Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

#110
post #13

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them. Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as muc…

> the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers I understand that people don't like any talk about layoffs and performance management, but I've never worked at a company where being in the bottom 5-10% of performers meant your job was safe. I've also never worked at a big company that didn't have at least 1-in-20 people who were clearly underperforming and everyone around them knew it. I kn…

The problem isn't that they are cutting 5%, it's that they use stack ranking. Within a team of 10, you may have the top 10 performers in the whole company, but the manager still has to rank them and assign at least one of them the bottom ranking, or engage in a lengthy battle to defend their high rankings.

They're not actually finding the bottom 5%, they're giving managers an excuse to get rid of people the don't like for whatever reason.

It's also terrible for morale to do it all at once. Sure, maybe there are some underperformers. Let managers deal with those people individually. Don't do a mass layoff where they have to select someone at a specific time when all their people might be doing well.

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