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2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

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Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#121

Post by FartyMcFarter »

operatingthetan wrote: post #119
abuani wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to see how they can turn moltbook into a money maker. Do they sell ads to agents?

Wasn't it primarily acqui-hire? Meta's AI strategy is what exactly? The best time for them to release a Chat GPT clone was 2 years ago. The second best time is today.

They have a ChatGPT clone app already, but it's not very good.

I tried asking it some technical questions that Gemini can handle just fine, and it quickly started giving false information and contradictions.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#122

Post by fn-mote »

twelve40 wrote: post #79
HDThoreaun wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta ad spend increases 10% every year. Their products have had non stop continual successes for decades at this point. If fb and insta never changed and were solely relying on tailwind you could say they havent had any success, but this clearly is not true imo. Their family of apps have changed a lot, mostly for the worse imo, but it has led to massive increases in ad shows and spend per ad show.

there are plenty of amazingly lucrative businesses that do really well, like online casinos, tobacco companies, etc. that happily milk their users and don't bother with improving human condition. You can call that "successful product strategy" i guess, but to me that's still pretty repulsive. You can also call this hyperbole, but i really am very much repulsed at this: increasing addictiveness for the weak minds to e…

We agree that the product is lucrative and the ethics are nonexistant.

> increasing addictiveness for the weak minds

This kind of statement is like saying only fools fall for spearphishing attacks. IME, there are lots of attacks on your attention, and it only takes one mistake.

If you have not been targeted yet, it's just a matter of time. For example, look around here at the Factorio users. "It's just a fun game." Ok, but how many hours a week are you spending on it? Looks like an addiction to me.

I know not everybody agrees with me, but when you are logging hundreds (thousands?) of hours on WoW, League, COD, ... it quacks like a duck.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#123

Post by silisili »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #120
doomslayer999 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your problem was that you tried doing work. What you want to do as an employee is make it so they can’t fire you not that you are actually useful.

How would you advise making it so they can't fire you?

Not OP, and nothing makes it impossible, but from my experience in big companies, being visible is way more useful than being productive.

I got further faster by just answering emails right away than by churning out code. I got constant kudos, which got me promoted, and invited to more meetings, which led to less actual work. All because I just started replying to emails sent to our group. In retrospect it feels pretty perverse.

In lean companies and startups...perhaps not so much.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#125

Post by Retric »

jjmarr wrote: post #114
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they are compensated during the year. Grocery stores have slim margins, but if you make 10k after selling 1M worth of stock buy turn over that stock 12 times a year that’s ~12% annual ROI not 1%.

If the company is spending $100k to employ you, you need to deliver $103.8k/year of value.

Again you assume a year delay on a workers full salary before the company gets compensated. Cash flow rarely works like that.

Uber driver does what 2 weeks of work before getting paid, they also front the cost of their car and gas etc. Meanwhile users are paying as soon as the ride occurs, so uber doesn’t need an account with a full years salary for every driver somewhere at the start of the year. Get paid before the worker and the worker is in effect giving you a zero interest loan.

Now for a consultant the company may get paid after the worker but the company is rarely waiting a more than a few weeks.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#126

Post by FartyMcFarter »

fcarraldo wrote: post #47
rishabhaiover wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's projected AI capex spend is $170-180 billion for this year. It's unreasonable to think AI would not be a reason for companies to consider layoffs.

Does that include R&D? Google is an AI _provider_, which is a considerably different profile in terms of spend from companies who are consumers. I would expect Google to be investing considerable resources to keep up with Anthropic and OpenAI.

I don't think it includes all of the R&D. From what I've read that's the amount they will spend on infrastructure for AI.

I guess some of that infrastructure will get used for AI R&D, but there are other R&D costs such as salaries that wouldn't be included in the figure.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#127

Post by Esophagus4 »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #54
paxys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their last success was acquiring Instagram in 2012. Every new effort since then has been hemorrhaging money. They get away with it because they have two limitless money faucets in Facebook and Instagram, but their product strategy as a whole has been a disaster.

It would be incredible to think that Mark Zuckerberg genuinely thought their Metaverse/VR investment was going to be akin to Xerox's bayarea PARC campus (developer of modern networking / GUI &c). I guess both were ultimately profit-negative financial disasters.

I guess he had nothing to lose by making those big bets really.

He’s got one of the biggest free cash flow machines in the world, so he’d rather swing and miss than not swing and be left behind, given that with $200B top line, there is essentially no financial penalty for a swing and a miss.

It does look goofy to have made such a big gamble on something as stupid as Metaverse in hindsight, though.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#129

Post by Esophagus4 »

wek wrote: post #101

From my experience in some large tech firms, you could easily cut 20% of the workers and not see much impact. There is so much bloat, process-people, meetings-people, etc... Even if the cuts aren't from AI, execs will use AI as a reason to make these cuts.

Yep - IME the trick is that fixing a bloated company is 2 parts: laying off bloat, and fixing the bad processes / restructuring the company to not need so much bloat in the first place.

I’ve worked at a company that pulled the layoff lever a lot but never did the hard work of investing in fixing the broken stuff… the layoffs actually just made everything worse.

If you have a team whose job is to put duct tape on the widget when it leaks, and you lay off most of that team without fixing the widget, your leak gets worse because you have fewer people with duct tape.

What you need is find people who can fix the widget, then fire all the duct tape people.

Re: 2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

#130

Post by mountainriver »

wek wrote: post #101

From my experience in some large tech firms, you could easily cut 20% of the workers and not see much impact. There is so much bloat, process-people, meetings-people, etc... Even if the cuts aren't from AI, execs will use AI as a reason to make these cuts.

Every big company I’ve worked for has an immense about of bloat. Whole departments that exist just because someone wanted it to exist at some point in time.

The health of an organization is often linked in their ability to fire people.

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