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Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

cnbc.com

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Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#251

Post by qgin »

varjag wrote: post #129
voidfunc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who is smart see's which way the winds are blowing and it isn't in the direction of "more liberal". The US is looking at a cultural reset back into the mid to mid-late 20th century.

I know people love to describe future events in terms of past events but am afraid America is heading in a direction entirely orthogonal to its history.

Agreed, if you could show Americans from the 1950s what’s going on today with MAGA etc, I imagine most of it would consider it very alien.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#252

Post by spacemadness »

blsapologist42 wrote: post #193
ralfd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am lukewarm about unions, but if that shit would be the new work norm I would go hard left. Wouldn’t be every coworker a competitor? How do you plan your life or start a family if you are every year 10% likely of being fired or backstabbed?

It's not like the firing is random. "Low performers" get a lot of warnings throughout the year. Most people are average or above so they will be completely unaffected, it's not likely you would drop from 50th percentile to 5th. On the other hand, do you really want to be stuck working with someone who's not very competent? I think we've all had that experience and it's miserable.

I love how so many on HN have embraced “low performers” as an unbending metric that isn’t gamed by management to fire people without paying severance. I’ve seen this happen.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#254

Post by ryandvm »

ralfd wrote: post #156
lacker wrote: post #73

When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.) Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a…

I am lukewarm about unions, but if that shit would be the new work norm I would go hard left. Wouldn’t be every coworker a competitor? How do you plan your life or start a family if you are every year 10% likely of being fired or backstabbed?

Indeed. If you're on a team where the bottom 5% are always getting culled, eventually you're going to find yourself in the bottom 5%. That's just math.

Sounds like a good way to turn a functioning team into Survivor Island.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#255

Post by siva7 »

blsapologist42 wrote: post #206
psunavy03 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing an arbitrary percentage as opposed to grading to a standard is not.

You're absolutely right. However, 5% is so low that it's hard to believe that there isn't at least that many underperoformers.

You still wouldn't need a quota so it's not really about underperformers in general but rather an easy excuse.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#256

Post by tqi »

mingus88 wrote: post #242
tqi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah 5% is a very weird number. Why not just stop over hiring?

Metas philosophy (based on what an ex Meta person told me) is “up or out” So if you aren’t getting a promotion, you are eventually getting fired. This meat grinder probably has some perverse incentives for employees and makes sure you are always churning through folk who you don’t need to pay QoL raises to

it's only up or out until you reach a terminal career level (E5)

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#257

Post by int_19h »

dns_snek wrote: post #247
int_19h wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting more specific, I don't buy the argument that we're getting more conservative. We are getting more culturally conservative though - you can see that in the polls that ask people to self-identify politically. Support for which specific policies that translates to obviously varies, but I think that's a separate question from the overall zeitgeist.

> you can see that in the polls that ask people to self-identify politically I don't trust these because I don't think most people can self-identify in away that accurately describes their beliefs. It usually just boils down to a binary "left vs right". There are many people who identify as "conservative", express their disdain for "leftists" over some rage-bait culture war topic of the week, but demand better worker…

That's not contradictory, though - such people are cultural conservatives, not economic ones, but cultural conservatism is precisely what people are talking about when they say that it's becoming more popular.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#258

Post by leidenfrost »

bee_rider wrote: post #204
int_19h wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual liberals aren't really a prominent political force at this point. The culture war is between conservatives and progressives , and, contrary to popular opinion, the latter is not synonymous with liberalism - indeed, on some issues (freedom of speech being a prominent one) they are in opposition.

I think most people in the US are, on some practical level, actual liberals. We can’t see it in the way a fish doesn’t see water. But I think mostly people think of themselves as accepting of others (while not wanting their own freedom of association impinged on). I think a lot of political disagreement shows up where liberal principles collide, like two people’s freedom of expression bumping into each other. Then it…

If people on the US were really liberal (in the original "capitalism of the free" sense), racism wouldn't even be an issue. People wouldn't care so much about race, and your genetics would be more as a "fun fact" rather than some central piece of your identity.

Also, they wouldn't care about atheists so much. Liberals may not be atheists themselves but they would be very detached from religion and "who whorships who". People wouldn't take religion so seriously.

The US is more like a bunch of conservatives trying to be liberal until their own beliefs trump liberal theory.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#259

Post by laweijfmvo »

paxys wrote: post #210

If you are a Meta employee and got sizable RSU grants around 2022-23 when the stock price was 1/5 what it is now, you should probably start packing your bags. Whatever your performance is, there's zero chance it can justify those upcoming paychecks.

Meta makes an incredible amount of money. Laying off employees who are otherwise doing fine just because their compensation is a bit higher than you thought would be stupid and petty.

Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

#260

Post by laweijfmvo »

blsapologist42 wrote: post #211
canttestthis wrote: post #123

Gave my notice yesterday, last day of work is Feb 3... 7 days before the layoff.

Why wouldn't you wait until the vest?

(Vest is on 2/15). Honestly, quitting before the vest and your bonus payout is just silly… curious what happened
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