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Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

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Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#121

Post by bryanrasmussen »

blitzar wrote: post #115
solidasparagus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to like the man but, I think it's pretty clear that running any global social media company is miserable and filled with impossible decisions + people who will hate you no matter what choices you make. It sounds like many social media CEOs would agree that it's like getting punched in the stomach every day

I am worth 1/billion of his net worth and every morning when I wake up I feel like I am getting punched in the stomach.

I wish this giant boot grinding me down into nothingness would allow me to stand up enough to get punched in the stomach for a bit.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#122

Post by rabite »

TomSwirly wrote: post #100
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #86

Sad for the employees but a little part of my heart perks up whenever I hear any story of Facebook failing in any way.

Me, too. So many of my friends have said much the same thing, too. Facebook has gone out of their way to be as horrible as possible. And their product is miserable, and they never update the user side. The last significant change was to add emojis six years ago, and that took them many years to do. If they didn't have an effective monopoly, they'd be long gone.

Never updating the user side is a positive signal for a social media company. Redesigns, even objectively superior ones, are frequently catastrophically received by users, and significant alterations to app experience can cause user flight. The actual need to update the user side is questionable.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#123

Post by benreesman »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #86

Sad for the employees but a little part of my heart perks up whenever I hear any story of Facebook failing in any way.

As someone who quit FB with a great deal of unvested stock, I've got more skin in the game than most as to the complex question of FB's culture, management, and impact in the world. I paid a lot of fucking money for a very nuanced answer to a very complex question about whether or not I felt I wanted to be there at that time.

So, from a position of vastly superior knowledge to the typical HN peanut gallery, I agree there are unfortunate things about FB, or at least were in 2018 when I left.

But as one person who gets out of line on HN sometimes to another: this is a negative value comment IMHO and I'd encourage you to strive for a more substantial critique.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#124

Post by lurker619 »

epicureanideal wrote: post #31
gregjor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Best people" according to what metric, other than salary? Facebook got fat from advertising and monetizing the worst aspects of social media. Does that require the "best people?" What technology has Facebook developed with all of those "best people" that could compare to what Bell Labs did with a group of fewer than 10?

I agree. Maybe best at grinding LeetCode, best at playing office politics, best at tolerating toxic work environments... But likely not best in actually building good software. No doubt quite good at that, but probably not meaningfully different than any other tech company in the area hiring from a similar talent pool. And because the candidates also need to be optimized for the qualities mentioned in the first parag…

So there are no office politics or bad work environments outside FAANG? I've worked in both FAANG and run of the mill tech shops, and I vastly prefer the professionalism and less politics in FAANG environments. YMMV.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#125

Post by Barrin92 »

eru wrote: post #89
camillomiller wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes genocides. Facebook played a pivotal role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. They even admitted to that, but nobody gives a flying f.

Snail mail played a vital role in the administrations of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Is that different or comparable?

It's different because nobody is in charge of snail mail which is merely a technology. Internet platforms have designs, incentives and people in charge for each aspect of their operation. They can chose what to amplify or not. It's been a convenient excuse of internet platforms to characterize themselves as generic technologies that nobody is responsible for or has ownership of, which isn't true.

The equivalent to snail mail is something like https, smtp or ssl, not FB.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#126

Post by l33tc0de »

thrwawayacc wrote: post #12

amazon manager here: it's the same with us. our director gave told us to manage out more people this year to hit our revised headcount targets for next year. there are no layoffs, just larger-than-normal targets for managing out people. I talked with friends across various orgs and the targets seem to range between 10% to 25% for different teams (as opposed to 5% for normal years).

Reading the Amazon horror stories on blind, I never reply to Amazon recruiters.

Amazon's hire-to-fire strategy is now widely known

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#127

Post by gsinclair »

antupis wrote: post #42
ohgodplsno wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"managing out" This is about the worst kind of doublespeak I have ever heard. It is actively malicious, the very thought of it brings images of purposeful abuse of employees. Seriously, just fire people.

Long run it also bad for company because best people usually leave first this kind situations and those people who can get another job stay so dead sea effect sets in https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-...

can —> can’t ?

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#128

Post by chottocharaii »

benreesman wrote: post #123
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #86

Sad for the employees but a little part of my heart perks up whenever I hear any story of Facebook failing in any way.

As someone who quit FB with a great deal of unvested stock, I've got more skin in the game than most as to the complex question of FB's culture, management, and impact in the world. I paid a lot of fucking money for a very nuanced answer to a very complex question about whether or not I felt I wanted to be there at that time. So, from a position of vastly superior knowledge to the typical HN peanut gallery, I agree t…

Oh come off your high horse. The comment reflects the sentiment of many a commenter.

Your choice to forgo your stock is neither here nor there. I hope your salary was enough to live comfortably after finishing

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#129

Post by ferdek »

randomsearch wrote: post #55
fortylove wrote: post #30

Seeing giants fall like this, where they achieve the highest peaks imaginable, but then struggle to find the next thing that is suitably big enough to satisfy expectations makes me never want to reach mega success status if I ever start a startup.

It’s like music. Most bands are capable of a great album, but the truly incredible artists can move from genre to genre constantly reinventing themselves. To create an org that can do the latter (hello, Apple) seems incredible difficult, but it always seems to involve exceptionally creative leaders. So the secret I think is to sell you mega status Facebook Borg and start afresh in a different area without the baggage…

> can move from genre to genre constantly reinventing themselves

Sounds a little bit like Nokia, more than Apple. Paper mill, cable products, rubber boots, tires, TV, mobile phones... ;)

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#130

Post by abeppu »

fny wrote: post #23

Facebook employs over 58K people. This is not a big deal especially considering tech went on a * massive* hiring binge recently. [0] Facebook had a recruiting crisis in 2021: https://www.protocol.com/workplace/facebook-docs-hiring-recr... [1] Facebook aimed to hire 10K Europeans for metaverse in 2021: https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-plans-hire-10000... People underestimate just how much COVID and the rapi…

Not to disagree at all with the broader point you're making but their last quarterly release says their headcount is like 83k. That roughly agrees with the original article which says 15% is 12k.

https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

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