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Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

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Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about this yesterday. There is actually something very cute and personal about WhatsApp. I would go to Telegram to get movies or some restricted (conspiracy?) news feeds. Spam, payment notes, etc. come via regular Messages/SMS. But when something comes via WhatsApp... Dunno, it just feels more personal from me. As if, it's someone I personally know or care about / involved with. I think some of this magic i…

Telegram to get movies? Can you explain this?

In addition to 1-to-1 chats and group chats, telegram has channels, which are kind of similar to twitter timelines, 1-to-many communications.

There are a large number of channels that take advantage of the 2 gig filesize limit by uploading pirated media. It's actually more convenient than torrents for most things, but it's still a hassle compared to a good usenet setup.

You can find entire seasons of animes just by doing a global search for the name of the anime. Sometimes there's even a chat attached for discussing the anime!

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see what you're getting at here but in this case, a lack of changes is NOT desired or virtuous. WA is being left in the dust by messaging platforms that actually care about shipping a quality product.

I thought about this yesterday. There is actually something very cute and personal about WhatsApp. I would go to Telegram to get movies or some restricted (conspiracy?) news feeds. Spam, payment notes, etc. come via regular Messages/SMS. But when something comes via WhatsApp... Dunno, it just feels more personal from me. As if, it's someone I personally know or care about / involved with. I think some of this magic i…

It's quaint :-)

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is their bet on VR misguided in your opinion?

The timing is too early and the product and the company are mismatched.

Both the other commenters make good points. Meta is uniquely positioned to build the first metaverse. It may not be the only metaverse and it may not come out on top in the end but it will likely prove a lot of the technology and patterns that will continue to be used. That’s why I don’t think they’re mismatched, you might be right about them being too early. They’ll have to build a lot of it themselves and try to stay competitive in the market at the same time. Difficult, but other companies have done this. They’re off to a good start as well since their hardware currently dominates the market.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#364
post #94

Sad for the employees but a little part of my heart perks up whenever I hear any story of Facebook failing in any way.

This is the kind of comment that gets a lot of likes and hearts on facebook

For someone who once bemoaned the lack of deeper discussions, you sure throw out a lot of flippant one-liners yourself.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the Amazon horror stories on blind, I never reply to Amazon recruiters. Amazon's hire-to-fire strategy is now widely known

And given the inertia, it will take them a decade to realize how stupid this strategy is.

i think it will take jeff bezos dying or stepping down for it to even begin to change

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#367

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"managing out" This is about the worst kind of doublespeak I have ever heard. It is actively malicious, the very thought of it brings images of purposeful abuse of employees. Seriously, just fire people.

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

They get sued, the cases will usually be settled out of court.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#368

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.

Whose expectations?

Do you want to build America's next top advertising company? Because that is what FB and Google did. Nothing else they have tried in ~20 years has come close to making any money.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#369

With everyone criticizing Facebook for bad it is for society, are there examples of Social Networks that you think do good?

It's not about "doing good", it's about "preventing harm", which FB has failed at doing at a staggering scale.

Re: Facebook reportedly laying off thousands of employees

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a massive difference between constructive dismissal and managing out. Managing out can often be as simple as a manager saying "Hey, your performance isn't great your not on course to get any bonus or raise this year" and the employee deciding "Fuck this, I'm off". Instead of in normal times, where you're trying to retain people and the conversation is often "Hey, you're making really good progress but there's…

Not giving a bonus can be grounds for a constructive dismissal claim (at least in the UK): https://employmenttribunal.claims/employment-law/bonus-dispu...

Well, if they didn't get a bonus for underperforming/not hitting the target, that's totally fine. Which is what is happening here, the target bar simply got raised.

As for an employee quitting on their own accord before the bonus dispersal date (which they otherwise hit the bar to receive), every tech company I worked for or have friends working at, they have pretty fair systems for dealing with it.

Generally, there is a cutoff date (which is usually about 4-6 months before the bonus disbursal/announcement date). If you leave at any point after that date, but before the bonus announcement/disbursal date, you still get your bonus in full. If you quit before the cutoff date, it gets prorated based on how many days you were an employee between the previous cut-off date and the upcoming one. There is also usually an extra nuance in math for people who just started working at the company and been there less than a year, but that detail is largely irrelevant.

For a specific example, at MSFT, they had a cut-off date somewhere mid-june. The bonus got announced early september and disbursed in mid-second half of september. If you quit at any point after that date in June, you get your full bonus. If you quit exactly 2 months before the cutoff date, lets, say mid April, you get full_bonus*10/12.

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