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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'

#411

Post by dragon-hn »

mtkd wrote: post #116

What Meta has been publishing on reasoning recently is very impressive -- I imagine they have internal product that is even further ahead Senior engineers can now get answers in seconds to questions it might have taken a junior a couple days to figure out ... agents are starting to do comparable workflows to low/mid-skilled ops/support teams in some verticals at a fraction of cost If Meta, and others pushing on AI, a…

> If Meta, and others pushing on AI, are not reducing heads in 2025 -- it would kind of undermine the value of the massive investments they are making

If we take Zuckerberg at face value, then they aren’t cutting headcount, but instead replacing ‘low performers’ with new blood.

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

#412

Post by dugmartin »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #149
lacker wrote: post #73

When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.) Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a…

It's understandable that in an organization that hasn't tightened its screws on employees, you will be able to find 5% low performers. But do you expect to find 5% low performers even after 5 iterations of these firings? Like eventually you are left only with medium to high performers, and you are just making their lives miserable by turning work into a meaningless Hunger Games season.

It sounds like you missed the fun that was stack ranking in the ‘90s. Combine that with “360 reviews” like we had at GE where team members rank each other and the only sensible thing was to “defect” and rank everyone low in the hopes someone wouldn’t understand the game and rank you higher.

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

#413

Post by par »

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.

""Low performers" get a lot of warnings throughout the year. "

oh you sweet summer child. No, in many cases they absolutely do not.

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

#414

Post by psb217 »

narnarpapadaddy wrote: post #374
psb217 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sorts of decisions and results that make a company the size of Meta succeed or fail happen above the levels of the folks who will get cut. Most of the net value produced by individual engineers is determined by which projects they're on, rather than whether they're good at their job. A savy entrepreneur with a few engineers worth of openai credits can create more value in a week than a median FAANG middle managem…

Personally, I think it’s both. Yes, the strategy is important but it’s nothing without the ability to execute. And we’ve all worked with the god-tier engineer who creates never-ending boondoggles because they can. And, yes, the larger the org the harder it is to get both strategy and execution aligned at once.

My point was that the scope/impact/value/etc of the contributions made by individual engineers will be determined more by the projects they're working on than by their inherent ability to contribute. So, if we go through the org and cut the bottom 5% of engineers by how much value they added to the company, most cuts will be determined by the context in which an individual was operating rather than their inherent ability to contribute. Ie, the cuts will mostly just punish people for getting stuck with bad managers or lackluster projects.

Of course, some people are obviously great in any context and some are obviously useless (or worse) in any context, but those folks should already be handled appropriately even without the "cut 5%" mandate.

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

#415

Post by voxl »

lacker wrote: post #306
spacemadness wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these numbers coming out of thin air? Gut feel perhaps? So after you fire 10% and don’t hire, that holds until there is nobody left? Maybe we should stop with the gut feel managerial apologies and think about what we’re doing and how it affects company morale, no?

The numbers are discussed by upper engineering management. They might change over time depending on the situation the company is in. Think of a hypothetical organization with 10,000 software engineers. You're the head of engineering. You have ten divisions, each with a VP managing 1000 engineers. Each VP has ten directors, each managing 100 engineers, and each line manager has 10 engineers on the team. The engineerin…

So: You have no measure of performance and go off vibes. You have no scientific basis and go off vibes. You pretend this is all logical and common sense but it's really all just vibes.

You could end up performing way better firing half of your teams. And what about your managers? How is an underperforming manager in the higher positions ever fired?

I get that measuring performance is incredibly difficult, but dressing it up as if 5-10% of people are underperformers anyway is just so tantamount to how baseless and incompetent most businesses are run these days. Especially in software.

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

#416

Post by alsetmusic »

Vaslo wrote: post #402
ochronus wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like the board trying to minimize risks in the new political-cultural climate. It's a pity, really.

It was equally a pity when they minimized them on the left in the last few years, wouldn’t you agree?

Given that true leftists genuinely want to create a better world and the GOP wants to do harm, I would not agree. I’m no saying it wasn’t fake bullshit then from Zuck. Just that it was fake but still made things a bit better for people rather than causing harm.

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

#417

Post by spacemadness »

littlekey wrote: post #384
psunavy03 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far from a bodybuilder, but this is certainly . . . a take. Whatever happened to the ideal of a sound mind in a sound body? Why does our society have this stupid "jock/nerd" dichotomy where the smart can't be strong and the strong can't be smart?

As someone who enjoys lifting weights, I agree with you. However, I can easily imagine an argument based on all of the strange add-on effects you get from being immersed in "gym culture". Working out isn't just working out, it means you start getting fitness posts in your social media algorithms, surrounding yourself with a new group of people with potentially different views on masculinity, shilling supplements, etc…

I learn what I can, apply it, and then try to run the hell away from the mostly online strength community at large. It’s a lot of drama, shilling, fragile egos, harmful advice, useless advice, mixed with some gems you can mine from it with some necessary filtering and vigilance. My local community on the other hand is amazing.

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

#418

Post by ghostpepper »

anthonypasq wrote: post #398
bigfatkitten wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just how he's always been. He's an insecure little incel at heart. Facebook's precursor was a HotOrNot clone that used female classmates' photographs without permission. It takes a certain type of person to build something like that.

??? He met his now wife when he was a sophomore in college and has an extremely normal family life as far as I can tell.

Facebook started as a project to grab photos of girls from his school and create a public ranking system on how hot they were.

https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a19746346/mark-zuck...

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

#419

Post by [deleted] »

hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #372
xracy wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, Okay, we can only criticize corporations in the very limited avenues where we discuss specifically how they're meant to make money. Not in any of the other ways those goals lead to questionable decisions.

it's not really a questionable decision though. in the absence of morals, which is what we have in a capitalist society, the way to maximize the success of a corporation is to remove low performers and replace them with high performers. that's common sense. criticizing a company for doing this because it "destroys people" is misplaced anger, as you should be criticizing the system the company operates in, which again…

[deleted]

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

#420

Post by xracy »

hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #372
xracy wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, Okay, we can only criticize corporations in the very limited avenues where we discuss specifically how they're meant to make money. Not in any of the other ways those goals lead to questionable decisions.

it's not really a questionable decision though. in the absence of morals, which is what we have in a capitalist society, the way to maximize the success of a corporation is to remove low performers and replace them with high performers. that's common sense. criticizing a company for doing this because it "destroys people" is misplaced anger, as you should be criticizing the system the company operates in, which again…

We can't criticize corporations because we don't have morals as a society. And we can't criticize "the system that creates the lack of morals" because "that's a whole 'nother discussion"? This is such weird speech policing. I have no qualms saying "Companies should hold themselves to higher standards, and I won't economically support them while they make these changes."

But it feels like your take is: "Guess all there is to do is just sit and feel righteous indignation while companies have their way with us, and the world crumbles around us."

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