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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

#391

Post by duxup »

thewebguyd wrote: post #94
dpe82 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the eternal struggles of BigCo is there are structural incentives to make organizations big and slow. This is basically a bureaucratic law of nature. It's often possible to get promoted by leading "large efforts" where large is defined more or less by headcount. So if a hot new org has unlimited HC budget all the incentives push managers to complicate things as much as possible to create justification for more…

Pournelle's law of bureaucracy. Any sufficiently large organization will have two kinds of people: those devoted to the org's goals, and those devoted to the bureaucracy itself, and if you don't stop it the second group will take control to the point that bureaucracy itself becomes the goal secondary to all others. Self preservation takes over at that point, and the bureaucratic org starts prioritizing its own surviv…

I worked at a company once who after several rounds of layoffs (and in the midst of a pretty pitiful product launch) sent out congratulatory emails about how exciting a time it was to work there and their main example was:

HR had completed many hours of meetings and listening sessions and had chosen to ... rename the HR department to some stupid new name.

It was like a joke for the movie Office Space, but too stupid to put in the film because nobody would believe it.

It’s amazing how process and internal operations will just eat up a company.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#392

Post by keeda »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #338
noosphr wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what did they do with it for the next five years?

Used it to do things? This seems like a weird question. OpenAI took about the same amount of time to go big as well (Sam was excited about open AI in 2017, but it took 5+ years for it to pan out into something used by people).

I think the point is that they hoarded the technology for internal use instead of opening it up to the public, like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, thus kicking off the current AI revolution.

As sibling comments indicate, reasons may range from internal politics to innovator's dilemma. But the upshot is, even though the underlying technology was invented at Google, its inventors had to leave and join other companies to turn it into a publicly accessible innovation.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#393

Post by ryandrake »

nobleach wrote: post #124
throwaway314155 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wut?

Taking a guess here but, I think what they're saying is, if most investors have gone all-in on AI, and the bubble pops, who will be investing in the next big thing? What investors will still have money to invest?

These kind of investors are rarely really “all in.” As in they literally have their last dollar invested in a risky endeavor. They’ll be fine. They’ll still be rich, and they’ll still be looking for more pipe dreams to throw their gobs of money at.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#394

Post by edoceo »

conradev wrote: post #384
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…

For “as insulated as possible”, I’d personally start a whole new corporate entity, like Verizon did with Visible. It wholly owns Visible, and Visible is undercutting Verizon by being more efficient (similar to how Google Fi does it). I love the model – build a business to destroy your current one and keep all of the profits.

IIRC Intuit did that for QBO. Put a new team off-site and everything. The story I read is old (maybe was a business book) and my motivated searches gave nothing.

From what I remember it was also about splitting the finance reporting - so the up-start team isn't compared to the incumbent but to other early teams. Let's them focus on the key metrics for their stage of the game.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#395

Post by cmuguythrow »

adi_lancey wrote: post #190
cmuguythrow wrote: post #186

If this impacted you - we are hiring at Magnetic (AI doc scanning and workflow automation for CPA firms). Cool technical problems, building a senior, co-located team in SF to have fun and build a great product from scratch https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30776/jobs

you can't drop a bookface link (use your external YC one) like this one: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magnetic/jobs/77FvOwO-...

dang it - thank you!

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#396

Post by seanmcdirmid »

keeda wrote: post #392
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used it to do things? This seems like a weird question. OpenAI took about the same amount of time to go big as well (Sam was excited about open AI in 2017, but it took 5+ years for it to pan out into something used by people).

I think the point is that they hoarded the technology for internal use instead of opening it up to the public, like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, thus kicking off the current AI revolution. As sibling comments indicate, reasons may range from internal politics to innovator's dilemma. But the upshot is, even though the underlying technology was invented at Google, its inventors had to leave and join other companies to turn…

So I started at Google in 2020 (after Sam closed our lab down in 2017 to focus on OpenAI), and if they were hoarding it, I at least had no clue about it. To be clear, my perspective is still limited.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#397

Post by jeffhwang »

dragonwriter wrote: post #381
B-Con wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAIR? FAANG typo, or is there a new acronym?

> FAIR? > FAANG typo, or is there a new acronym? FAIR is the Meta AI unit (Fundamental AI Research) at issue, as spelled out in the second sentence of the article.

Used to be "Facebook AI Research" before company changed name from FB to Meta

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#398

Post by throw4rr2w3e »

palmotea wrote: post #102
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…

> My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". ... I don't spend as much time looking to "align with stakeholders"... Isn't that "move fast and break things" by another name?

Yup. And if this were a Chinese company, people would be calling it “chabuduo.”

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#399

Post by woooooo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #396
keeda wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that they hoarded the technology for internal use instead of opening it up to the public, like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, thus kicking off the current AI revolution. As sibling comments indicate, reasons may range from internal politics to innovator's dilemma. But the upshot is, even though the underlying technology was invented at Google, its inventors had to leave and join other companies to turn…

So I started at Google in 2020 (after Sam closed our lab down in 2017 to focus on OpenAI), and if they were hoarding it, I at least had no clue about it. To be clear, my perspective is still limited.

I think "hoarding" is the wrong connotation. They were happy to have it be a fun research project alongside alphago while they continued making money from ads.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#400

Post by FireBeyond »

Terr_ wrote: post #353
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…

I seldom quote Steve Jobs, but: "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."

Which is amusing if you look at Apple's product lines and there's several decisions and examples across each that have specs/features that are clearly about delineation and preventing cannibalization.
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