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A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#171

Post by rhaway84773 »

neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

Wasn’t Facebook late to the mobile party insisting on their web app instead of creating a decent native app for the longest time?

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#172

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #171
neel8986 wrote: post #12

Meta is still a 600B company and large credit goes to Zukerberg. His insight into jumping to mobile at the very beginning, making critical acquisitions, relentlessly going to new geographies, investment in AI all played off. Every major company made mistake including Google ( Google Plus ), Microsoft ( Windows phone ) and apple ( entire 90s ). A company making mistake just means they are still taking risks and not sa…

Wasn’t Facebook late to the mobile party insisting on their web app instead of creating a decent native app for the longest time?

They sure were. They bet the farm on HTML5 but ended up having to change their minds when it didn't work.

When I joined FB in 2013 people told me it was a really bad move as they didn't get mobile.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#173

Post by b112 »

grumbel wrote: post #164
irrational wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Lanier is right, regardless, virtual reality and immersive virtual world still sound like two different things.

I can see the point in Lanier argument, however there is a much bigger problem for VR: There is no VR analog to Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube and Co. VR is still very much an activity in which you have to actively engage, you have to find a game that is interesting, load it up and play. You can't just casually doom-scroll in VR and have the algorithm find interesting content for you. There is no app for that. An…

there has been surprisingly little effort in finding out what those people would actual do when they have the headset on.

True. However, the internet was around for 20+ years, before profit entered. Radio took decades, TV too. These things take time.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#174

Post by gedy »

gmerc wrote: post #169
srj wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our leadership had no vision beyond doubling down on VR and doing a complete copy and paste of TikTok. Meanwhile our middle managers hired as many people as possible to justify their own promotions, as everyone is too lazy to consider impact beyond # of reports and there's no accountability. Finally, due to the above, we laid off many ICs. I guess that's what he meant?

Lol middle managers. The headcount games were VPs. How do you think headcount was distributed, by middle managers?

I personally think of most "VPs" in huge companies as middle managers.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#175

Post by syockit »

morepork wrote: post #149
bink wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their focus on making Facebook for mobile platforms was smart, their efforts to make a mobile phone were late and substandard. By critical acquisitions I assume you mean Instagram and WhatsApp. Both were anti-competitive attempts to stave off becoming the next MySpace (but also successful). Everything else on the list of acquisitions looks like gambles that did not pay off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merge…

Apple's famously very secretive, so who knows what they've spent money on internally that has never seen the light of day. There have been rumours for the last 10 years that a bunch of people are working on a self driving and/or electric car, with little to show for it so far. I doubt anyone outside a select few in the company would know how much.

I remember hearing that rumour when they were building a tech center in Yokohama. But all the job listings never mention anything related to self-driving so I always wondered what they actually do there.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#177

Post by sneed_chucker »

awegio wrote: post #77
sashank_1509 wrote: post #22

There has to be some incredible lag in the news media, to be reporting this at this time when Meta managed to almost triple its stock price in less than a year. Meta beat all analyst estimates in its earnings call, whatever Meta is doing it’s working. My only regret is not investing enough into Meta when it was 90$ (Now it’s 240$)

Well, it's about workforce, not the shareholders. There is probably some correlation between morale and stock price, though.

There's a major correlation at a company like Meta where a huge chunk of your compensation is payed in stock grants.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#178

Post by red-iron-pine »

serf wrote: post #126
irrational wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world I, on the other hand, know nobody that uses virtual worlds. I find it plausible that a tiny amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world. I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.

>I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would. there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world. A good percentage of that are partaking in games that easily qualify as virtual worlds. no personal anecdote needed, huge amounts of people are already spending time in places that qualify as virtual worlds. Our interfaces are clunky, and you can shift 'virtual world' around to mean something else, b…

I'm an adult gamer, and I also own a Valve Index VR kit.

VR is fun, but has serious limitations. A nice way to take a walk on the rings of Saturn, but no way in hell am I going to trust it with my privacy. And it's totally overkill for something like scrolling cat-meme videos or wishing someone happy birthday via social media.

Plus the Index is pretty good but it still gives me headaches and dizziness after extended periods.

I absolutely think there is more to come with VR, but it's only after there is already a flourishing ecosystem that social media will find its place there, not before.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#179

Post by zeroonetwothree »

nradov wrote: post #130
bink wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their focus on making Facebook for mobile platforms was smart, their efforts to make a mobile phone were late and substandard. By critical acquisitions I assume you mean Instagram and WhatsApp. Both were anti-competitive attempts to stave off becoming the next MySpace (but also successful). Everything else on the list of acquisitions looks like gambles that did not pay off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merge…

Facebook had no real efforts to make their own mobile phone. https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/mark-zuckerberg-asked-facebook... They did a brief collaboration with HTC on a custom Android skin back in 2013 but that appears to have been their only major effort in the handheld device space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First?wprov=sfla1

This is wrong, I worked there at the time and a lot of people were working on the phone project. It got kind of scrapped before it saw the light of day though.

Re: A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs

#180

Post by red-iron-pine »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #67
kibwen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A future where "everything that you care about is in VR" describes a hellish dystopia. Even in a future where humans spend large amounts of time in virtual spaces, our meat bodies still appreciate going for walks in the park.

The average American spends something like 3 hours per day watching TV, and upwards of 6 hours of total screen time, according to a quick Google search. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine a world where the screens we use are part of a head-mounted display? Think about any time you've been on a bus, train or plane -- most people on board are using their phones or tablets. I suspect within this decade it's…

> The average American spends something like 3 hours per day watching TV

Would Better Call Saul be a better story in VR?

One of the things that makes shows and movies good is tight editing and focus; a VR system where I can look around is the antithesis of that.

Same way I feel about open world games like GTA V vs. something like Bioshock which is highly linear but also highly directed.

But FWIW I'm totally with you about the airplane headset, never have I wanted to be somewhere else then when I'm on a plane...

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