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

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

#341

Post by matwood »

bradlys wrote: post #239
blsapologist42 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is quite disingenuous. “Low performers” in many of these companies aren’t low performers. It’s often whoever the boss likes the least due to whatever reason. I’ve rarely seen anyone let go and thought the person was a low performer. Most of the time the person was fired because they questioned authority.

I haven't worked in FAANG, but have seen and personally fired people before. All were justified, and in times where I had to do the firing I was always late. And I knew I was late because the team would say, 'about time'.

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

#342

Post by matwood »

paxys wrote: post #217

So in the first two weeks of the year Zuck has announced: - Replacing their global policy chief with the company's highest ranking Republican. - Appointing Dana White to the company's board. - Changing content policies to be aligned with the incoming administration. - Elimination of DEI programs in hiring. - Removing tampons from men's restrooms. - Defending all this in a 3 hour Joe Rogan interview. Ranting about the…

> Is this history's most bizarre midlife crisis? What is going on with this man?

He's the definition of a perpetual beta trying to be alpha.

I would love to spar with him in BJJ sometime. After you train for awhile you can lock up with someone and immediately feel who they are. An alpha stays calm and relaxed, never panicking even as they are being put to sleep [1]. He went into BJJ hoping to become alpha and it just highlighted even further he's not.

[1] BTW, this isn't a bullshit masculine/man/woman thing. I roll with plenty of women and many of them are more alpha than many men I know.

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

#343

Post by matwood »

sefrost wrote: post #248
iLoveOncall wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been in progress for around a year, long before there was any indication that Trump would win the election, or even be out of jail for it.

Do you happen to know why? The other replies are all providing a narrative that it is related to the new US administration, but as you say it wasn't very clear who would win until the results were counted. So if it's been happening for a year it couldn't be related to that.

Speculation. Brexit (one of the greatest self-owns in political history, though the US is trying to top it) and the UK continue to tighten general travel/immigration rules. London used to be a great spot to have a companies EU presence. Brexit has only amplified London as primarily a bank for world criminals. Companies eventually wonder what's the point of being in the UK when they still need EU presence anyway.

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

#344

Post by animuchan »

mdhb wrote: post #338
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.

As opposed to say the former who are on a book banning spree and openly threatening the media for simply making fun of their dear leader? This idea that those shouting loudest about “free speech” actually give a shit about it is really one of the most nakedly disingenuous things I’ve seen in a long time.

I think it's a false dichotomy: both sides pretend to care about free speech and other "classic liberal" values, and both sides' actions usually aren't aligned with this at all.

The side that has the largest gap between stated goals and actual policies then proceeds to lose the election.

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

#345

Post by ralfd »

matwood wrote: post #342
paxys wrote: post #217

So in the first two weeks of the year Zuck has announced: - Replacing their global policy chief with the company's highest ranking Republican. - Appointing Dana White to the company's board. - Changing content policies to be aligned with the incoming administration. - Elimination of DEI programs in hiring. - Removing tampons from men's restrooms. - Defending all this in a 3 hour Joe Rogan interview. Ranting about the…

> Is this history's most bizarre midlife crisis? What is going on with this man? He's the definition of a perpetual beta trying to be alpha. I would love to spar with him in BJJ sometime. After you train for awhile you can lock up with someone and immediately feel who they are. An alpha stays calm and relaxed, never panicking even as they are being put to sleep [1]. He went into BJJ hoping to become alpha and it just…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN69JZ0X-2M

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

#346

Post by TrackerFF »

brink wrote: post #95
GiorgioG wrote: post #11

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Being stuck carrying coworkers that don't perform sucks. Firing under-performers is what healthy businesses do.

It is all relative though. If the team average performance is 50%, one can easily identify the very low and very high performers. The very low performers will barely deliver anything at all, while the very high performers will deliver multiples of the average.

Now - if the mean is higher, variance is low, and the distribution isn't symmetric, that's when things start to become harder.

Worst case, you start firing people that are "low-performers" on paper, but in reality might be very close to the "meets expectation" workers. Which creates a very toxic environment, as your average workers will be walking on eggshells.

And we know from history that this isn't some outlandish scenario in tech. There have been companies that have had(still have) a strict stacked ranking system - and come hell or high water, someone has to go.

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

#347

Post by surgical_fire »

ein0p wrote: post #339
surgical_fire wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a flaw in your reasoning: you did not consider that a lot of the projects at FANGS are completely unnecessary and exist only because these companies massively over-hire. Maybe? Companies of all shapes and size do poor decisions. On the other hand, the nature of some projects require some time of R&D to find out whether something is worthwhile or not. > Ideal working environment is when there are a lot of wo…

Whether something is worthwhile or not is usually up for debate - not all projects are equally worthwhile. Having more "worthwhile" projects than engineering resources gives engineers a choice of work. That too is a good signal for whether or not something is worthwhile, because then you get motivated people to work on those things, rather than people doing things because they have nothing better available to them. I…

> Having more "worthwhile" projects than engineering resources gives engineers a choice of work.

This is pure fantasy, except maybe if you work on a startup environment where engineers have a lot of autonomy.

In any sufficiently large organization, you will be assigned to a team, and the scope of work will be sort of defined in some level of hierarchy above you as an individual engineer.

You may have some autonomy to pick up some initiative here and there, but that will be somewhat limited. You may also try to switch to different teams where work may be more attractive to you.

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

#348

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#349

Post by dspillett »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #302
dspillett wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically pulling jobs out of other territories and concentrating on being all-American where possible is going to sell to President Shart & chums more than the multinational aspect. As an aside from that though, recent & planned changes in UK regulation are trying to put more onus on social media companies to police their dungeons, and they don't like that. I'm sure this aggravation has a causal relationship with Mu…

> being all-American where possible How much of Meta's staff is H1B?

I should have been a bit more specific: as all-GOP-American as possible.

Imported workers are just fine, even though that is not something you'd derive from many a campaign speech, particularly for specialist workers as vaguely defined by the H1B system which have an indirect benefit of adding a bit of brain-drain friction to potentially competing companies in other economies, as well as shoring up the effect of temporary local skills deficiencies.

But work being done in non-American jurisdictions where the regulatory demands of other governments might affect how an American company can gouge out a profit is what causes upset. That and other regulatory demands suggesting SM companies make effort to crack down on some of the “free to speak hate” problems, which the current powers-that-be that side of the pond don't actually see as problems. Or simply that work being done elsewhere is money going into someone else's economy ‑ while many H1B workers will be sending some money back to family elsewhere, they won't be sending most of it as they need to clothe themselves, eat, pay rent, have a few luxuries, etc.

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

#350

Post by higeorge13 »

ramesh31 wrote: post #159
asdev wrote: post #14

how much more confirmation do we need that we are in a recession?

>how much more confirmation do we need that we are in a recession? Were we in a recession in the 90s, as the rust belt was hollowed out and earning its name, and Wall street reaped the once in a generation windfall of outsourcing an entire country's manufacturing base overseas? Many would say those were the good times. White collar professionals had their time in the sun for those couple of decades, and GDP exploded.…

This is also my take on this.

Tech became tighter to join 2 years ago and for the next years are going to play music chairs on the open seats as lay offs continue, executives think that AI can replace anyone and younger generation (with lower wages) joins the tech workforce.

It's not recession per se, these companies will continue to be crazy profitable, it's just a change in mindset. See also the famous "founder-mode" that came up recently for startups and scaleups.

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