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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

#401

Post by throwawayty456 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #371
SoftTalker wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raises the question though, why is the lawyer talking to you in the first place, and not your manager?

A lot of times, they do. But where I'm at, lawyers have the last say for some reason. A good example is our sub/sister companies. Our lawyers told us that we needed separate physical servers for their fucking VMs and IAM. We have a fucking data center and they wanted us to buy new hardware. We fought and tried to explain that what they were asking didn't even make sense, all of our data and IAM is already under the s…

Your lawyers were probably right, i can see plenty of situations where this would be necessary to strength the notion that the sister company is independent. Sometimes you do not care, but there are situations where this independence is key.

Also keep in mind that if you go court, the judge will be in his 70s as well so is likely to interpret things the same way your lawyers do.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#402

Post by FireBeyond »

bongodongobob wrote: post #362
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…

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 Everyone clicks buttons on their grossly outdated tools.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…

> 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.

Hah, at a previous employer (and we were only ~300 people), we went through three or four rounds of layoffs in the space of a year (and two were fairly sizeable), ending up with ~200. But the "leadership team" of about 12-15 always somehow found it necessary to have an offsite after each round to ... tell themselves that they'd made the right choice, and we were better positioned for success and whatever other BS. And there was never really any official posting about this on company Slack, etc. (I wonder why?) but some of the C-suite liked to post about them on their LI, and a lot of very nice locations, even international.

Just burning those VC bucks.

> 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.

I had a "post-final round" "quick chat" with a CEO at another company. His first question (literally), as he multitasked coordinating some wine deliveries for Christmas, was "Your engineers come to you wanting to do a rewrite, mentioning tech debt. How do you respond?" Huh, that's an eye-opening question. Especially since I'm being hired as a PM...

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#403

Post by ainch »

bartread wrote: post #44
mikert89 wrote: post #7

Guaranteed this is them cleaning out the old guard, its either axe them, or watch a brutal political game between legacy employees and new LLM AI talent

That was my reading too. Legacy team maybe not adding enough value and acting as a potential distraction or drag on the new team.

Cutting people at FAIR is a real shame though - great models like DINO and SAM have had massive positive impact - hopefully that work doesn't slow in favour of LLM-only development at MSL.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#404

Post by lostmsu »

I find it ironic given recruiters from that division have been messaging me every 4 months like a clock during the last 2 years, last one just a month ago from Llama team. Fortunately, they did not have an option to work in Singapore (where I want to be) or Montreal (where I am). Otherwise after Llama 3.x success the org seemed appealing until 4's release.

My wife left Meta Reality Labs in summer 2024 precisely because it seemed dysfunctional. I can see how the Llama division could have ended up in a similar state if it adopted similar management practices.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#405

Post by nradov »

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…

Setting up a separate insulated internal organization to pursue disruptive innovations is basically what Clayton Christensen recommended in "The Innovator's Dilemma" back in 1997. It's what IBM did to successfully develop the original PC.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=46

Every tech industry executive has read that book and most large companies have at least tried to put it into practice. For example, Google has "X" (the moonshot factory, not the social media platform formerly known as Twitter).

https://x.company/

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#406

Post by kyleee »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #309
matwood wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision This was noted a long time ago by Brooks in the Mythical Man-Month. Every person added to a team increases the communication overhead (n(n − 1)/2). Teams should only be as big as they absolutely need to be. I've always been amazed that big tech gets anything done at all. The other option would be to have certain people just do…

A solution to that scaling problem is to have most of the n not actually doing anything. Sitting there and getting paid but adding no value or overhead.

This comes up from time to time; what’s the best way to crack into this niche of software engineering? My rates for doing nothing little and keeping up appearances are very competitive and I can do it for about 10-20% less than your typical big co coaster.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#407

Post by lostmsu »

khazhoux wrote: post #177

Everyone here ragging on Wang but I can never figure out how some people grow the balls to work themselves into such high positions. Like, if I met with Zuck, I think he’d be unimpressed and bored within 2 minutes. Yet this guy (and others like him) can convince Zuck to give him a few billion dollars. There is a language these people speak, and some physical primate posturing they do, which my brain just can’t emulat…

Hm, 2 minutes is too low a bar.

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#408

Post by kyleee »

yodsanklai wrote: post #251
ironman1478 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at Meta, I wish they did this when I was there. Way too many people not agreeing on anything and having wildly different visions for the same thing. As an IC below L6 it became really impossible to know what to do in the org I was in. I had to leave.

They could do like in the Manhattan project: have different team competing on similar products. Apparently Meta is willing to throw away money, could be better than giving the talents to their competitors.

I’ve always thought there is way more room for this, small teams competing on the same problem and then comparing results and deploying the best implementation

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#409

Post by [deleted] »

throw4rr2w3e wrote: post #398
palmotea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

[deleted]

Re: Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

#410

Post by nomel »

throw4rr2w3e wrote: post #398
palmotea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

I don't think that's the correct translation. Chabuduo is also the mindset of the guy that doesn't give a damn anymore, and just wants to produce the bare minimum.

Move fast and break things is more of an understanding that "rapid innovation" comes with rapid problems. It's not a "good enough" mindset, it's a "let's fuckin do this cowboy style!" mindset.

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