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Meta and Google are cutting staff

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Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diff count/LoC count is recorded and made publicly available for all engineers in a graph that lets you easily compare metrics between developers and teams. This means if you are constantly comparing your output to the rest of the team. The multi-axis performance review criteria that requires you to show deliverables on things like your impact on team-building or culture. This means that when you might normally get a…

Doesn't that just encourage writing code for max LoC rather than efficiency or maintainability? Instead of generalizing a procedure you use in multiple places to make it a single function, if you write it out (slightly differently) each time you do it, then you get a higher LoC count?

I mean people there aren't stupid and there is a fairly high engineering bar, your code won't get through review if you're doing stuff like that.

Where it really digs is when you are 1.5 weeks into writing an in depth project plan, meeting with other engineers, coordinating cross teams, researching, reviewing code etc. you better have a good explanation why your delivery over time graph has a big flat spot.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diff count/LoC count is recorded and made publicly available for all engineers in a graph that lets you easily compare metrics between developers and teams. This means if you are constantly comparing your output to the rest of the team. The multi-axis performance review criteria that requires you to show deliverables on things like your impact on team-building or culture. This means that when you might normally get a…

That penalizes those implementing one line bug fixes buried in the codebase. Each one may be worth 10K lines of new code but numeric driven management will never know.

[deleted]

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#245
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats what a PIP is for. Layoffs are for firing a lot of people at once. Doesn’t have to be due to performance.

PIPs are lawsuit fodder. A general layoff where a bunch of people are let go at the same time makes it a lot harder for the person who was let go say it was targeted at them.

Why do you think PIPs are lawsuit fodder?

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#246

I've noticed news articles saying that Meta have been cutting back on support staff, like cleaners and custodial roles. To me, these are the wrong people to be cutting. The people who clean Meta are not the reason why Meta is hemorrhaging money. I'm sure they actually do their jobs very well. They should fire the people who are actually causing the problems. Everyone stopped using facebook because they are uncomforta…

> Apple: it's intentionally slowing working products

This is really disingenuous. They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot. Not exactly what I would call “intentionally slowing working products” but rather “reducing CPU power consumption to mitigate abrupt reboots to keep a reliable user experience”.

Granted, Apple was a bit shady by not documenting this and giving the user the option to toggle it, until they were “caught”.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your manager, but rather the manager submits your review to a calibrating board that tries to ensure fairness and maintain quality standards. They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking but you are absolutely graded on the curve of the other engineers in your department and level.

Anecdotally, I know this process got rid of at least 1 engineer in the past few months. No egregious mistakes, just general underperformance.

It gets rid of plenty of performing/overperforming engineers too because it is exhausting.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that they seem to think that software developer performance can be measured meaningfully and accurately in a standard way across teams.

So should they hand out promotions and fire people based on randomness? Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism? What's the better solution?

Less scaling, smaller focus? I kid, but there's not an actual correct answer to any of this. Nobody likes nepotism except the family that it serves.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#249
post #2

This will be the trend among most tech companies. Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount. Most companies will likely not reduce pay if they can help it to maintain competitiveness, but if you’re a bottom or middle performer or on a non-revenue generating team suddenly your job security even at “safe” companies like Google is at risk.

> Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount.

Are you saying that because stock prices are dropping that the market has reacted to excessive headcount?

Cause I think a better explanation for that, is that in the past 2 years we've had inflation, and that was reflected in the profits of the companies for 2020-21, and now that the fed is lowering interest rates, we're expecting that inflation to stop, and so that's affecting the stock market.

This seems to have very little to do with these companies business models, and everything to do with them failing to recognize that their profit changes are readily explained by inflation/deflation. Which seems to be a better explanation of what the markets are reacting to.

Re: Meta and Google are cutting staff

#250

Facebook and google have "required some employees to apply for new jobs if they wish to remain at the company." I have to say this is a sort of hilarious newspeak framing of layoffs. "We're not laying you off, you just need to apply and get accepted for a job or else you're terminated." OK, so I was a job-haver, now I'm a job-seeker... but at least I haven't been laid off!

Microsoft did this post-Sybase split. People who had seen the Sybase code were contaminated, and had a bad time.
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