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Meta lays off 11,000 people

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Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#421

Post by jghn »

StevePerkins wrote: post #283
jghn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At sone point “I take responsibility” came to mean nothing more than “My bad”. It’s as if the act of saying it was your fault is all that’s necessary. Ive noticed it used this way more and more, presumably as people realize it’s utility as a get of jail free card

Just months ago, "The Crying CEO" guy became a viral meme for expressing too much empathy in a layoff. It's fucking job terminations. You're GOING to be criticized no matter how you do them. The best approach is to just be robotic about it, and maybe throw in a platitude that amounts to, "It's not you, it's me" .

Sure. But it's only "taking responsibility" if you demonstrate you're actually intending to either a) actually be accountable in some fashion and/or b) actually lay out how you'll change to make the bad thing not happen in the future.

"We need to layoff half of the company. I'm sorry and take responsibility. I have failed our employees and shareholders. Because of this, I am stepping down". That's taking responsibility.

"We had a major F-up. It was my responsibility. And here are the concrete steps I am taking to ensure it never happens again, along with the mechanisms you all have to hold me accountable. If these fail, the following bad thing will happen to me." That's taking responsibility

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#422

Post by mabbo »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #110
pmontra wrote: post #41

> At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. This is very similar to the Stripe layoff memo at https://…

Shopify announced staff layoffs in July 2022. The Shopify CEO expressed the same sentiment repeated later by Stripe and Facebook: " ...given what we saw, we placed another bet: We bet that the channel mix - the share of dollars that travel through ecommerce rather than physical retail - would permanently leap ahead by 5 or even 10 years. " " It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off. What we see now is the mix reverting…

Yeah seriously, I read the meta announcement and thought "Did you just steal Tobi's letter and do some find/replace on it?"

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#423

Post by crazygringo »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

It means he's not trying to scapegoat a VP or the board or say "It's not my fault nobody foresaw this economy."

It doesn't mean anything in terms of action or "self-punishment" but nor should it. The dude has already lost many more billions of dollars than you or I will ever see.

I'm no fan of the guy, but some people won't even take responsibility verbally. So at least he's not descending that low.

And the severance seems decent so it all seems to be handled fine. Not sure what more you're looking for.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#424

Post by britch »

sagebird wrote: post #395

While many are commenting that these layoffs are sensible given the situation, I am fearful that laying off approximately 13% of Meta employees will lead to a less connected world. I don’t think people fully understand the magnitude of step-backwards it will be in terms of people connecting in this world. Does Zuckerberg take responsibility for what this will mean to people who simply need to connect more through gre…

What is your concern here? What does "a more connected world" actually mean?

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#425

Post by greenthrow »

StevePerkins wrote: post #283
jghn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At sone point “I take responsibility” came to mean nothing more than “My bad”. It’s as if the act of saying it was your fault is all that’s necessary. Ive noticed it used this way more and more, presumably as people realize it’s utility as a get of jail free card

Just months ago, "The Crying CEO" guy became a viral meme for expressing too much empathy in a layoff. It's fucking job terminations. You're GOING to be criticized no matter how you do them. The best approach is to just be robotic about it, and maybe throw in a platitude that amounts to, "It's not you, it's me" .

He was not criticized for showing too much empathy. He was criticized for not actually showing empathy. He made it all about himself. You might want to look into how you misunderstood that so badly.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#426

Post by roflyear »

hbn wrote: post #420

> Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I mean people who had financial gain on the line (like yourselves) pretended this was the case so you could cash in at the time and then pull the rug once it wasn't working any more (as you're doing now), but everyone with half a brain knew it wasn't sustainable. Literally how could that acceleration be p…

FB is making $30+bn a year profit, and is laying off people to reduce costs by $2b. They could continue to pay these people.

Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium company would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the business. Some even until after that point. Layoffs are awful.

Large corps, nah. Just lay people off if we get a little nervous!

Note, I don't think these corps are entitled to employ you. Absolutely not. I just think the corporate situation we got ourselves in is really nasty.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#427

Post by solumunus »

tootie wrote: post #299
eschneider wrote: post #146

I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.

This is going to be a repeat of 2000, not 2008. There's seemingly no contagion and no secular stagnation. This is just unwinding of the cheap money era that flowed overwhelmingly into SV. You'll see a cooling off of red hot compensation, a lot of failed startups that no one ever understood and the ongoing crypto crash. This may end up being enough to trigger a mild recession.

Mild recession? How are you not understanding the global macro set up right now? Europe will see a ~10 year recession, possibly the worst ever. America may fare better but there's no way you're getting away with a "mild" recession.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#428

Post by agotterer »

refurb wrote: post #231
eschneider wrote: post #146

I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.

I've been through 3 lays offs years ago and after the 2nd one I got pretty good at predicting the 3rd. It's basically a cookie cutter approach. Watch out for emails that talk about "tough decisions" and "respect for our people". I actually took a company email, printed it and highlighted key statements and told everyone lay offs were coming. About 6 months later they were formally announced.

Maybe less relevant now that a lot of companies are still remote. In the past when a company cuts back on office perks, such as snacks, it’s often a leading indicator of financial issues and possible looming cuts.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#430

Post by brink »

tifadg1 wrote: post #137
whatwherewhy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the small central EU country where I live, that wouldn't even saturate the open programmer positions - just about 1/10 of it. I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in any measurable way. If anything this just means these people will be working on more different products, and that means more opportunities for even more programmers in the future.

I'm quite interested in learning which small central EU country has 150k outstanding programming jobs.

It sounds like HN satire.
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