Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#301

Post by gregjor » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

noahtallen wrote: post #92

gregjor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Best people" according to what metric, other than salary? Facebook got fat from advertising and monetizing the worst aspects of social media. Does that require the "best people?" What technology has Facebook developed with all of those "best people" that could compare to what Bell Labs did with a group of fewer than 10?

I mean, despite my huge ethical disagreements with FB, they have successfully built one of the largest platforms (the largest by active users??) in the world. Scaling at this side is very, very difficult. Not to mention creating some of the widest-used OSS libraries on the web. Plus, it’s one of the few platforms our grandparents can use, and we all know how hard it can be to make software that older folks like to us…

I can agree with all of that but still question how it requires so many supposedly “best” engineers. Facebook won the network effect lottery years ago, creating (or falling backwards into) an addictive platform that people join because everyone they know joined, not because their platform has obvious technical advantages over competitors. They scaled the platform organically over time because they had to, not because of some genius master plan.

My parents successfully use iPhones and iPads and GMail, along with Facebook. I can’t say they “like to use” Facebook, but if they want to see photos of their kids and grandkids they have to use it. I don’t know anyone who enjoys using FB, including my own kids. It seems users see it as a necessary evil — where else can they go?

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#302

Post by unity1001 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

Isn't this the result of the artificial bloat that was in the US economy before the whole domination of the dollar as reserve currency thing came crashing down?

Just a few months ago, dollar was the uncontested reserve currency, allowing the US financial institutions - including the Fed - to inject cash into the economy in whatever way including fractional reserve lending. Inflation just didn't go up. A lot of money to invest. Resulting in a bloated stock market with immense 'valuations' with little profit to show for the valuation.

Now the Ukraine war, sanctions, various countries moving to trade in their own currencies, and voila - all the dollars that were being used to trade before are unused and they are flowing back to the US, causing inflation.

The bloated stock economy is going down, and the companies that used to float on the bloated value of their capital are feeling the squeeze - Facebook, Twitter, Google...

This may result in an adjustment in the economy with normalized valuations, salaries, prices and monetary compensation in the long run. It feels like its just cutting the fluff out of the bloated economy that ran on inflated stock values. But in the end, the resulting environment should not be too different than the former one - just without the bloat.

How would this affect the investment in tech, is an open question though. It would probably end up like how it is in other regions of the world - still high, profitable and lucrative, however, less bloated. Like in Europe, China and anywhere else.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#303

Post by aaomidi » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

ak_111 wrote: post #294

pembrook wrote: post #172

It’s crazy to me how Facebook has so many employees when their entire business is basically managing 3 software products (Facebook, instagram and the advertising platform). Meanwhile I think Apple has about the same number of employees if you subtract the retail Apple store workers. Yet, Apple’s business is comprised of managing, and this is only a rough guess: - 30+ hardware products and their supply chain, marketin…

It is more crazy if you remember when they bought whatssapp it was less than 20 employees supporting a billion user. And the app doesn't look like it changed that much since it started being supported by 10,000 employees (guessing).

Too many cooks

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#304

Post by warcher » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

unity1001 wrote: post #302

Isn't this the result of the artificial bloat that was in the US economy before the whole domination of the dollar as reserve currency thing came crashing down? Just a few months ago, dollar was the uncontested reserve currency, allowing the US financial institutions - including the Fed - to inject cash into the economy in whatever way including fractional reserve lending. Inflation just didn't go up. A lot of money…

Dollar was way up as a global reserve currency relative to the euro, yen, yuan, pound last I checked. Did something change in the past few days?

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#305

Post by tayo42 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #213

marban wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe, on the other hand, with its ~26k headcount is juggling an astonishing range of products and services it seems.

Adobe's the most forgotten and ignored tech company that actually makes staple software products and services, I think. No matter how much people hate their price gouging :-)

That's funny I never thought about that. Is their pay low?

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#306

Post by TideAd » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

agluszak wrote: post #159

thrwawayacc wrote: post #12

amazon manager here: it's the same with us. our director gave told us to manage out more people this year to hit our revised headcount targets for next year. there are no layoffs, just larger-than-normal targets for managing out people. I talked with friends across various orgs and the targets seem to range between 10% to 25% for different teams (as opposed to 5% for normal years).

what does "managing out" mean?

at Amazon it means surprising them with a PIP

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#307

Post by sideshowb » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:50 PM UTC

d1sxeyes wrote: post #66

sideshowb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It genuinely sounds like a synonym for "constructive dismissal". Makes me wonder how they avoid being sued ?

In the US, there's no federal law on constructive dismissal so there are variations, however, generally, constructive dismissal is not always the same as unfair dismissal , although we most often hear the term come up in conversations about an unfair constructive dismissal. There are also a significant number of ways you can 'manage someone out' which are not any more 'constructive dismissal' than 'quiet quitting' is…

Ok fair, if you're being nasty to everyone it's not discrimination at least

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#308

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #161

The FAANG paradox : these companies all have this performance-intensive culture with the gruelling interview, "perf cycles", promotion processes, OKRs, etc... to ensure all engineers function at the top of their capacity. At the same time, their new public facing products have been mostly underwhelming over the last decade. It seems most of the innovation occurred back when FAANGs were 10-100x smaller. (The AI work i…

Engineering ability has nothing to do with product management; critical feedback from engineers is even usually met with "Well, that's because you're not the customer." or "You just don't get the vision.". And, to be fair to them, their rate of failure is probably no worse than the odds of a tech startup failing (90%?), it's just more visible because anything a FAANG releases is trumpeted with fanfare.

All that the high level of engineering talent at FAANGs allows is for bad product management to drive themselves off a cliff faster. (But at least the engineers get paid handsomely for it.)

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#309

Post by warcher » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

fortylove wrote: post #30

Seeing giants fall like this, where they achieve the highest peaks imaginable, but then struggle to find the next thing that is suitably big enough to satisfy expectations makes me never want to reach mega success status if I ever start a startup.

It's a lottery ticket. You can be good, even very good, your whole life and do just fine.

But these kinds of once-in-a-generation moonshots, they're a product of wild ass luck, so if you find yourself with one, you grab it with both hands and ride it as far as it goes. Because it's not about you-- you need to be strong enough to hold on, keep the thing from exploding or crashing into the side of a mountain, but it's bigger than you and your level of control is partial at best. Honestly, it's usually the product of something big happening in the world that you've randomly managed to tap into.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#310

Post by kamaal » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #290

kamaal wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>35 year old engineers were making more money than leading heart surgeons with 35 years of work experience. Indian here and can confirm. This sort of situation is why so many people in comparable professions(like medicine) resent software people in India. Having said this I do believe software people deserve to make more than doctors. Medicine especially after a while can be about trivia scholars. Software on the ot…

So that's why so many Indians move to the US to work as doctors.

After moving to US they still resent software people. It's not just money. They tend to imagine themselves as more intellectually capable people[due to their degree requiring long and expensive academic training] compared to engineers in general. Which isn't true.

And it's not just about software. They look at something like a big dam, skyscraper, a F1 car, a fighter jet, or something like Google and kind of feel insecure that there are bigger things which they could have been a part of, and feel they kind of (bad)-lucked into studying medicine[which happens to be a expensive academic course to finish, and also take more time].

I once showed a relative who is also a doctor using logic programming to solve puzzles like Sudoku etc. He kind of expressed disappointment he was stuck in a profession that doesn't allow this sort of everyday involvement in solving problems, or building things. The money part just adds to their resentment.