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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

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

#241

Post by gary_b »

killingtime74 wrote: post #228
HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large-scale enterprises are really something to behold. Take one small example. A certain large company has cafeterias in many locations. Each of these cafeterias is like a small enterprise. And it has nothing to do with the core business itself. To order food, you need an app. Someone has to build, test, deploy, and maintain that app. It also has a back-end. Someone has to build and maintain those servers as well. T…

It's all true but the cafeteria is generally outsourced. Those employees are not on the books of the real enterprise and the software shared between all of the outsourcers customers. Same goes for many non-core functions.

I can confirm for a certain very large enterprise that this is not the case. The employees ARE on the books of the company and considered full time employees with full benefits, and the software is custom built for this enterprise, by this enterprise, and not shared with any other enterprises

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

#242

Post by nradov »

BobbyJo wrote: post #233
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?

> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place? Isn't the obvious answer yes for everyone that sells their labor? If I gave you the choice between being an employee in an economy where it is more difficult to land a job, but you could be sure that job would last, or an economy where it is easier to find a job, but it was completely insecure, I think most would choose the former. No? Worring about finding…

No, of course not. How silly. As an employee who's been laid off a couple times I greatly prefer an economy where it's easy to find a job.

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

#243

Post by pembrook »

pipes wrote: post #230
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

As someone who has worked at big tech (and interviewed fellow big tech workers), I can confirm this is pretty typical.

People from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc...it's all the same. Given the size of these organizations (anywhere from 100K-300K employees if you include contractors), there's a vanishingly small chance the individual you're interviewing had influence or responsibility over any important thing specifically. And if they were high enough on the org chart to be responsible for something real, they weren't ever hands on and just played politics all day in meetings.

Everyone will claim otherwise of course, but its all layers and layers of diffusion of responsibility.

The pace of work inside these orgs is, meet for months about a narrowly scoped new feature (eg. "add a 5th confusing toolbar to Gmail to market Google's 7th video call tool"), take months to build it and run it up the organizational gauntlet for approval, launch it and then chill for 3 months because nobody does anything big in Q4.

For many people at these orgs this is what an entire year of "work" can look like, for which they will be paid roughly $400k.

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

#244

Post by ironman1478 »

pipes wrote: post #230
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

I worked at Meta and they're spot on.

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

#245

Post by NewsaHackO »

BobbyJo wrote: post #233
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?

> Would you rather them never hire them in the first place? Isn't the obvious answer yes for everyone that sells their labor? If I gave you the choice between being an employee in an economy where it is more difficult to land a job, but you could be sure that job would last, or an economy where it is easier to find a job, but it was completely insecure, I think most would choose the former. No? Worring about finding…

I guess the issue with the first one would be actually getting the job. If jobs were that valuable, I'd expect other factors not necessarily related to job performance to be reasons in getting a job, especially knowing (or being related to) the right person.

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

#246

Post by joenot443 »

pembrook wrote: post #243
pipes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

As someone who has worked at big tech (and interviewed fellow big tech workers), I can confirm this is pretty typical. People from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc...it's all the same. Given the size of these organizations (anywhere from 100K-300K employees if you include contractors), there's a vanishingly small chance the individual you're interviewing had influence or responsibility over any important thing spe…

While at G I was one of three engineers working on a mid-sized iOS app. We shared ownership of the entirety of the codebase. It wasn't dissimilar to some of the other teams I've worked on at orgs of differing sizes.

> The pace of work inside these orgs is, meet for months about a narrowly scoped new feature, take months to build it and run it up the organizational ladder for approval, launch it and then chill for 3 months because nobody does anything big in Q4.

This sounds wonderful, it certainly wasn't the case for us.

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

#247

Post by drivebyhooting »

pembrook wrote: post #243
pipes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

As someone who has worked at big tech (and interviewed fellow big tech workers), I can confirm this is pretty typical. People from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc...it's all the same. Given the size of these organizations (anywhere from 100K-300K employees if you include contractors), there's a vanishingly small chance the individual you're interviewing had influence or responsibility over any important thing spe…

Given how inefficient Meta et al are, why do the pay so much more than the nimbler smaller companies? (Rhetorical question, I already know the answer: monopoly and regulatory capture)

Of course those engineers would rather have more meaningful work if it came with similar compensation and work life balance.

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

#248

Post by 1594932281 »

pembrook wrote: post #243
pipes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

As someone who has worked at big tech (and interviewed fellow big tech workers), I can confirm this is pretty typical. People from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc...it's all the same. Given the size of these organizations (anywhere from 100K-300K employees if you include contractors), there's a vanishingly small chance the individual you're interviewing had influence or responsibility over any important thing spe…

I've also worked (and currently work) at a big tech company and personally this has not been my experience. I'm sure it happens but it's not typical.

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

#249

Post by freejazz »

matchbok3 wrote: post #26
OtomotO wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Where is there a successful socialist economy that produces innovative products that impact the whole world? I'll wait for you answer.

The thought that Meta has in any way benefitted society is objectively insane.

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

#250

Post by pinkmuffinere »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #64
nobleach wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't my experience at all. I had a recruiter screen where she asked me some technical questions. I then had a longer discussion, then a code screen, then an arch-deep-dive. The entire process was very professional and EVERY person came off like they really wanted me to succeed. (Sure it's an act but it's a very helpful act when you're in the hot seat) My intervews were in 20202/2021. Perhaps things have change…

2020/2021 might as well be ancient history in tech terms. Your experience does not reflect the current status quo at all.

This seems a bit ridiculous, that’s only 5-6 years ago. Things change, but the mechanisms and culture isn’t entirely different.
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