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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

bloomberg.com

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Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#121

Post by bdangubic »

Analemma_ wrote: post #102
thewebguyd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction, the layoffs will be followed by massive re-hiring overseas in 6 to 18 months. The domestic jobs aren't coming back.

I’m curious why this meme is so sticky. In the early 2000s people were also panicking that all the software jobs were going to India and never coming back. It was so pervasive it made the cover of Wired magazine, but it never happened. Why is this time different?

The reason it never happened wasn't that MANY jobs went off-shore (they did) but that the pace of this paled in comparison to number of new jobs that were opening up on-shore. Now that we are seeing demand stall on-shore this is going to hit the front more-so than before. Many layoff news later come with "oh by the way, we also hired x,xxx people off-shore. I think has generally been overblown but I think it is a thing if someone actually wanted to run "America First" campaign and actually mean it, to outlaw or make off-shore development cost-prohibitive. I work on a project in a company that employs now about 1k people and over 40% of that workforce is off-shore. Just about every colleague I have (DC metro area) that works at another joint is in the same spot (or much worse, like CGI etc which doesn't even have developers on-shore anymore...)

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#122

Post by smallmancontrov »

operatingthetan wrote: post #96
matchbok3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do. There is nothing "cowardly" about it. Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?

Exiting low performers is one thing, but using layoffs as tool to put pressure on your workforce to extract more labor and keep them busy is a toxic culture.

Toxic = green brokerage accounts for those in charge

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#123

Post by abosley »

matchbok3 wrote: post #59
trjordan wrote: post #20

It's an honest surprise that this isn't spun as "internal AI efficiency gains." They want the efficiency, of course there's AI component, but they're not pre-claiming victory. Neat. It's worth remembering that there's an _actual_ underlying economic problem here. Interest rates are up. AI spending is expensive. A dollar invested in a company needs to do _more_ than it did 5 years ago, relative to sitting in treasury…

Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do. There is nothing "cowardly" about it. Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?

Agreed. What happens when every company lays off 10, 20, 40% of their staff? AI Agents don't pay taxes and dont participate in a meaningful amount of the consumer economy.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#124

Post by JeremyNT »

oytis wrote: post #106
JeremyNT wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not buying it personally, I think this is the start of a slow unwinding. AI won't replace everybody overnight, but it'll make 10% layoffs year after year a real possibility. Either people are simply made redundant because bots in the hand of a bot wrangler can do much of their work, or people are relatively less efficient than their peers because they refuse to adapt to a world where AI is a force multiplier.

Not going to argue about what will or will not happen (predictions are hard, especially about the future), but you absolutely don't need AI to explain layoffs at Meta. On one hand they have a failed investment in Metaverse and an underwhelming attempt to participate in AI race. On the other hand they have a stable advertising business that doesn't need much innovation, but can always benefit from some cost cutting

I think this is broadly correct too.

They obviously biffed it by hiring for a bad moonshot when the pandemic money printers were turned on, and now they have plenty of belt tightening to do.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#125

Post by ValentineC »

vostrocity wrote: post #91
kbar13 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do we feel that way? it's becoming more and more likely that developments in AI lead to a K graph in experience / value - senior / self sufficient workers will be significantly more valuable than ever. unless you mean that the quality of domestic workers is declining, which i'd agree in most things (tho for some things like software i think still has a chance)

I don't think the quality of US workers has to decline. The quality of workers in lower CoL places like India simply has to increase, and it has. Both of the companies I've worked for have opened India campuses in the past few years.

Hot take: their quality is possibly a reason these people were unable to leave their country in the first place.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#126

Post by matchbok3 »

BoredPositron wrote: post #86
matchbok3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are a very normal thing for businesses to do. There is nothing "cowardly" about it. Would you rather them never hire them in the first place?

Reducing your workforce always means you either made a strategic mistake, your bottom line is hurting, your growth is stagnating or you hired McKinsey (lol) not a good sign for company health and always bad for morale.

Literally not true. Some bets just don't work. If a company tries to enter some new market and fails, they may use a layoff.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#127

Post by sdthjbvuiiijbb »

kbar13 wrote: post #74
thewebguyd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction, the layoffs will be followed by massive re-hiring overseas in 6 to 18 months. The domestic jobs aren't coming back.

why do we feel that way? it's becoming more and more likely that developments in AI lead to a K graph in experience / value - senior / self sufficient workers will be significantly more valuable than ever. unless you mean that the quality of domestic workers is declining, which i'd agree in most things (tho for some things like software i think still has a chance)

>it's becoming more and more likely that developments in AI lead to a K graph in experience / value - senior / self sufficient workers will be significantly more valuable than ever.

I don't buy this at all, this narrative feels like pure cope to me. The skill ceiling for working with AI tooling is not that high (far lower than when everyone had to write all their code by hand, unquestionably). To me it seems far more likely that software engineering will become commoditized.

I'm sure everyone posting about the supposed K graph believes that they're on the valuable side of it, naturally.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#128

Post by kartoffelsaft »

adammarples wrote: post #99
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Re: > If America’s so rich how’d it get so sad > https://www.derekthompson.org/p/if-americas-so-rich-howd-it-...

Huh, did anything happen in 2020? I'm wracking my brains trying to think of anything.

As the article touches on, it's not just about what happened in 2020, but why it hasn't rebounded. It's been long enough we can't use 2020 as an excuse.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#129

Post by autaut »

dboreham wrote: post #98
JeremyNT wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not buying it personally, I think this is the start of a slow unwinding. AI won't replace everybody overnight, but it'll make 10% layoffs year after year a real possibility. Either people are simply made redundant because bots in the hand of a bot wrangler can do much of their work, or people are relatively less efficient than their peers because they refuse to adapt to a world where AI is a force multiplier.

Also doesn't help that nobody can say how many people it needed to develop and maintain software even before AI. Elon declared the emperor had no clothes.

He really didn’t tho. X was constantly breaking and falling apart in his hands, so he repackaged it in xAI where he got a bunch of money to hire a bunch of engineers to develop features and keep it running. It’s still not profitable. But people have no critical thinking skills so they haven’t noticed this

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#130

Post by kitsune1 »

trjordan wrote: post #20

It's an honest surprise that this isn't spun as "internal AI efficiency gains." They want the efficiency, of course there's AI component, but they're not pre-claiming victory. Neat. It's worth remembering that there's an _actual_ underlying economic problem here. Interest rates are up. AI spending is expensive. A dollar invested in a company needs to do _more_ than it did 5 years ago, relative to sitting in treasury…

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