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Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

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Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#361

Post by andsoitis »

overfeed wrote: post #196
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re not talking about an overworked nurse. Same Facebook-AI-researcher-pay is likely an eye watering amount of money

> We’re not talking about an overworked nurse. We're talking about overworked AI engineers and researchers who've been berated for management failures and told they need to do 5x more (before today). The money isn't just handed out for slacking, it's in exchange for an eye-watering amount of work, and now more is expected of them.

Where did you get that people are expected to do 5x more? That just seems made up.

And do not forget that people have autonomy. They can choose to go elsewhere if they no longer think they’re getting compensated fairly for what they are putting in (and competing for with others in the labor market)

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#362

Post by bongodongobob »

noosphr wrote: post #275
dekhn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a lot of frustration at the leadership level about product velocity- and much of the frustration is pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases. My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". There are definitely limits on this, but it's been helpful when dealing with various internal negotiations. I don't spe…

Big tech is suffering from the incumbents disease. What worked well for extracting profits from stable cash cows doesn't work in fields that are moving rapidly. Google et al. were at one point pinnacle technologies too, but this was 20 years ago. Everyone who knew how to work in that environment has moved on or moved up. Were I the CEO of a company like that I'd reduce headcount in the legacy orgs, transition them to…

Your intuition is right. I work at a big corp right now and the average age in the operations department is probably just under 50. That's not to say age is bad, however... these people have never worked anywhere else.

They are completely stuck in the 90s. Almost nothing is automated. Everyone clicks buttons on their grossly outdated tools.

Meetings upon meetings upon meetings because we are so top heavy that if they weren't constantly in meetings, I honestly don't know what leadership would do all day.

You have to go through a change committee to do basic maintenance. Director levels gatekeep core tools and tech. Lower levels are blamed when projects faceplant because of decades of technical debt. No one will admit it because it (rightly) shows all of leadership is completely out of touch and is just trying their damnedest to coast to retirement.

The younger people that come into the org all leave within 1-2 years because no one will believe them when they (rightly) sound the whistle saying "what the fuck are we doing here?" "Oh, you're just young and don't know what working in a large org is like."

Meanwhile, infra continues to rot. There are systems in place that are complete mysteries. Servers whose functions are unknown. You want to try to figure it out? Ok, we can discuss 3 months from now and we'll railroad you in our planning meetings.

When it finally falls over, it's going to be breathtaking. All because the fixtures of the org won't admit that they haven't kept up on tech at all and have no desire to actually do their fucking job and lead change.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#363

Post by andsoitis »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #354
andsoitis wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real question is, how/why did they over-hire in the first place place This question has been answered many times. Time to move on and fix forward.

I havent seen a single answer that isnt surface level stuff.

Reasons in the press over the last two years or so are due to factors like aggressive growth projections, the availability of cheap capital, and the pandemic-driven surge in demand for online services.

But why do YOU care? Are you trying learn so you can avoid such traps in your own company that you run? Maybe you are trying to understand because you’ve been affected? Or maybe some other reason?

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#364

Post by paxys »

georgeburdell wrote: post #334
paxys wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all these genius American AI scientists that they should hire instead? Pull up a list of the top 1000 most cited AI research papers published in the last decade and look at the authors. You'll find them full of names from China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Israel. They are the ones getting jobs. This isn't discrimination, just reality.

Ok, sounds like you expect Zhao’s org to have names from India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel then? Where are you disagreeing with me?

Who says it doesn't?

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#365

Post by goalieca »

hinkley wrote: post #169
iknowstuff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be even more specific, the company making money is merely a proxy for the actual goal: increased valuation for stockowners. Subtle but very significant difference

Because a CEO with happy shareholders has more power. The shareholder value thing is a sop, and sometimes a dangerous one. We keep trying to progressively tax money in the US to reduce the social imbalance. We can’t figure out how to tax power and the people with power like it that way. If you have power you can get money. But it’s also relatively straightforward to arrange to keep the money that you have. But they d…

> We keep trying to progressively tax money in the US to reduce the social imbalance.

The former does not lead to the latter.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#366

Post by halfcat »

RyanOD wrote: post #18
ceejayoz wrote: post #3

Because the AI works so well, or because it doesn't? > ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios. That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.

As AI improves, possibly it begins replacing roles on the AI team?

The fact they didn’t say that speaks volumes.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#367

Post by HDThoreaun »

nopurpose wrote: post #320
noosphr wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech is suffering from the incumbents disease. What worked well for extracting profits from stable cash cows doesn't work in fields that are moving rapidly. Google et al. were at one point pinnacle technologies too, but this was 20 years ago. Everyone who knew how to work in that environment has moved on or moved up. Were I the CEO of a company like that I'd reduce headcount in the legacy orgs, transition them to…

> Google et al. were at one point pinnacle technologies too, but this was 20 years ago. In 2017 Google literally gave us transformer architecture all current AI boom is based on.

and then sat on it for half a decade because they worried it would disrupt their search empire. Googles invention of transformers is a top 10 example of the innovators dilemma.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#368

Post by halfcat »

LunaSea wrote: post #282
renewiltord wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm totally fine with it. No one can guess precisely how many people need to be hired and I'd rather they overshoot than undershoot because some law stops it. This means that now some people were employed who would not otherwise be employed. That's spending by Meta that goes to people.

> No one can guess precisely how many people need to be hired Overshooting by 600 people sounds a lot like gross failure. Is someone going to take responsibilities for it? Probably not. That person's job is safe.

They’ll get a promotion for such effective cost cutting measures.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#369

Post by HDThoreaun »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #304
solid_fuel wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases. I've never observed facebook to be conservative about shipping broken or harmful products, the releases must be pretty bad if internal stakeholders are pushing back. I'm sure there will be no harmful consequences from leadership ignoring these internal warnings.

When I worked there (7 years), the gatekeeper effect was real. It didn’t stop broken or harmful, but it did stop revenue neutral or revenue negative. Even if we had proven the product was positive to user wellbeing or brand-favorability. Yes I’m still bitter.

Why would a business release a revenue negative product? Stopping engineers from making products that dont contribute to the bottom line is exactly what these gatekeepers should be doing

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#370

Post by game_the0ry »

ceejayoz wrote: post #3

Because the AI works so well, or because it doesn't? > ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios. That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.

Probably bc Meta's management (Zuck) is capricious and does not know how to manage resources.
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