Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

eshumarneedi.com

191–200 of 246 posts

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#191
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read from people with relevant experience, the only way to get a large organization change direction is to issue imperative decrees lacking nuance, because large organization by nature tend to be process heavy and are too incompetent to follow a nuanced direction. If you have tens of thousands of employees the more complicated the communication is, the larger the variation of interpretation of its mean…

I have a theory of this based mostly in time working in Meta's RL org on VR and Wearables (disclosure).... There's a fundamental comms issue, I think, where you can only broadly communicate the least common denominator of what every involved person will understand. The "imperative decrees lacking nuance." This is doubly hard if the thing is New, so it isn't broadly understood by default in the collective professions…

Technically I think there IS another org struct that helps, but it's impractical for a number of Big Corp reasons.

A broad studio-like portfolio, where you mostly stay hands-off and willing to burn a ton of money in directions that won't work, and accept that they are out of your control. Stochastically let the best 10% of isolated plays rise on their own while 90% fail.

I think the VC model tends to do this relatively well. Large orgs though are inevitably culturally, or even legally -- "shareholders! fiscal responsibility! optimal deployment of capital!" -- INCAPABLE of being that intentionally lossy and hands-off.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#192

The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four mon…

> Had Meta stock not been structured the way it is, I would like to think that the board had replaced Zuckerberg as CEO. He saw that coming and slyly prevented it. He cannot be as dimwitted as you suggest.

Zuckerberg isn’t dimwitted but Meta is probably at its peak as a company, lightning probably isn’t going to strike again, Metaverse and Meta AI are going nowhere no matter how much money he throws at it. But he’s not alone. Microsoft can spend and spend and it won’t help Copilot fly.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#193

I wonder when (if ever) the companies realize that demoralizing your workforce (and destroying that sector of the job market) doesn't have only advantages. I know plenty of people that reacted with the desired fear, putting in long hours to avoid layoffs, willingness to accept lower pay because the job market sucks, etc. - but I think there are also plenty of the the mythical 10x engineers that just checked out, stop…

Yup, I was once one of those 10x engineers who had been “amazing at the job” but now I’m just collecting a paycheck, waiting for my layoff. I’ve been completely exhausted from the hundred thousand layoffs happening. I have friends at other companies who are just getting pips despite having great accomplishments. Employers have figured out that they don’t need to pay severance that way.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#194
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

his biggest fear is not being the one to nail the next big thing. it happened with mobile, although that was basically irrelevant in hindsight. he thought it was metaverse, which failed, while in the meantime it was actually the new AI cycle, which he was late on / lost by the time llama 4 flopped. i think he’d rather just blow up the whole company than continue to be solely associated with one (or even a few) of the…

I think Elon owns a lot of real estate in these guys’ heads. When you have $200B+ in the bank, little else matters others than being seen as a titan of industry IMO. I think the fact that Musk has Tesla and Spacex (even with all his extra curricular activities) makes a guy like Zuckerberg seethe that he’s just “the internet websites guy”.

Musk is not in their heads, the guy who died in 2011 is in their heads. You know the founder of Apple…

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#195
post #115
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His most innovative move was acquisition

The word innovative does n9t mean anything anymore. It became synonym with "earns a lot of money". People who innovate without becomming super rich dont get ackwnowledged as innovative. CEO buys or copy an app - innovative.

As someone who made advances in two mostly independent fields (arguably 3), 100%!

But also, while I'm not mega rich, I'm very comfortable, if only to keep me from stirring the pot some more with my troublemaking nature. This is where Tom Lehrer's advice that selling out is OK if you get a good price comes into play. And yes, satire, but surprisingly good career advice in the real world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz-Aed356kA

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#196

I wonder when (if ever) the companies realize that demoralizing your workforce (and destroying that sector of the job market) doesn't have only advantages. I know plenty of people that reacted with the desired fear, putting in long hours to avoid layoffs, willingness to accept lower pay because the job market sucks, etc. - but I think there are also plenty of the the mythical 10x engineers that just checked out, stop…

Unfortunately for boards and ceos, software engineers arent dumb. If they see your bottom line explode while their workload increases and their pay doesn't, they will not give you 10x. Honestly I'm surprised if people are even giving 0.5x in the current climate. Engineers need to stop trusting big companies to get their back.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#198
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found arguments for or against such technological advancements meaningless, if we don't specify what timeframes we are talking about. Sometimes I have the impression that people who disagree are simply thinking in different timeframes. For me, only short- and sometimes mid-term timeframes are practical in such deabtes. Long-term is interesting, but more in the realm of science fiction. In the context of AGI,…

> In the context of AGI, is it inevitable eventually? Sure, I would agree, unless some catastrophic event puts back our technological advancement. What if it’s not a catastrophic event, but technological progress just asymptotically approaches 0? What if there is a limit to layers upon layers of abstraction and at some point it just becomes too complicated to keep going? What if we all somehow decide that we don’t wa…

> What if it’s not a catastrophic event, but technological progress just asymptotically approaches 0? What if there is a limit to layers upon layers of abstraction and at some point it just becomes too complicated to keep going?

Looking at history, there is not really an argument for progress to stop in the long term. I think I get what you mean, that further advancement gets more and more complicated and the human mind gets to a limit what it can comprehend and reason about. But lots of research and progress have been augmented by technology in the past 70 years or so, and I don't see a reason why it wont continue along that path. I agree that there is a limit to everything. But it is almost impossible to forsee when and where that is going to happen.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#199

The title is a weird. Ineffective? At doing what? This is an interesting quote from Zuckerberg: > trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected Combine that with the other theories about Meta management in the article, I think we have the answer to is Zuckerberg a "dimwitted or just evil". It's probably the former. He can't plan four mon…

Zuckerberg was barely adult when he started Facebook. And he probably bumped into a few older guys who thought they knew better than him, and history proved them wrong. He likely developed some irrational belief that clever and young beats anything else, and saw an echo of his own bravado in Alexandr Wang. Turns out his heuristics were not calibrated properly.

Ya but he’s not young anymore. By his own logic he should step down and let a Stanford dropout run things.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Admits' Meta's Layoffs Were Ineffective

#200
post #58

Meta is in a weird place because Zuck is at this point very far removed from day to day company operations and its overall culture, but still wants to be the one calling all the shots. Plus just like Musk and others he has megalomania and wants to rule the world. And considering his hold of the company no one can really argue with him. You can pretty much see his thought process in real time. "Google and OpenAI have…

The guy is out of touch with society.
Post reply on HN