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Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

nytimes.com

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Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#51

Post by micromacrofoot »

moralestapia wrote: post #10

Even if both "sides" really wanted to get along, working with someone making 100x (if not 1,000x) more than you is poised to be a weird interaction. It must also be massively demoralizing, particularly if you're an engineer who has been there for 10+ years and has pushed features which directly bring in revenue, etc... Btw, >But Mr. Wang, who is developing the model, pushed back. He argued that the goal should be to…

He's not wrong, you can't compete against blue sky R&D if you're focused on making something profitable. It's the innovators dilemma.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#52

Post by AndrewDucker »

MangoToupe wrote: post #16
mullingitover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta doesn’t really have a social media business, they have an ad business that’s driven by a massive dumping operation in social media.

What is the difference between the two? What kind of social media business is there other than selling ads?

Mastodon is not ad funded. Dreamwidth has been about for fifteen years now and is entirely user funded.

Scaling is harder. But you can have a niche which works fine.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#54

Post by rchaud »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #27
mullingitover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta doesn’t really have a social media business, they have an ad business that’s driven by a massive dumping operation in social media.

That framing is silly. “NBC doesn’t have a television business, they have an ad business”. “Google doesn’t have a search business, they have an ad business.” “Amazon doesn’t have a retail business, they have an ad business.” It doesn’t provide any value to reframe it this way, unless you think it’s some big secret that ads are the main source of revenue for these businesses.

NBC produces their own content, Facebook and Instagram meanwhile are the equivalent of public access TV with ads. There is no unique "brand" that Facebook has, anything posted on there is also posted everywhere else.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#55

Post by ozgung »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #51
moralestapia wrote: post #10

Even if both "sides" really wanted to get along, working with someone making 100x (if not 1,000x) more than you is poised to be a weird interaction. It must also be massively demoralizing, particularly if you're an engineer who has been there for 10+ years and has pushed features which directly bring in revenue, etc... Btw, >But Mr. Wang, who is developing the model, pushed back. He argued that the goal should be to…

He's not wrong, you can't compete against blue sky R&D if you're focused on making something profitable. It's the innovators dilemma.

I agree, classic innovator's dilemma. It's a new business enterprise, has nothing to do with Meta's existing business or products. They can't be under the same roof and mush have independent goals.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#56

Post by mullingitover »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #27
mullingitover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta doesn’t really have a social media business, they have an ad business that’s driven by a massive dumping operation in social media.

That framing is silly. “NBC doesn’t have a television business, they have an ad business”. “Google doesn’t have a search business, they have an ad business.” “Amazon doesn’t have a retail business, they have an ad business.” It doesn’t provide any value to reframe it this way, unless you think it’s some big secret that ads are the main source of revenue for these businesses.

I'd contrast this with Flickr. Flickr was the original social network. They have a modest loss leader, a reasonable free tier, but nothing like the permanent money bonfire that the big tech firms operate.

They were kinda the first real Web 2.0 social media site, with a social graph, privacy controls, a developer API, tagging, RSS feeds.

I feel that they never really got to their full potential exactly because these big VC-backed dumping operations in social media (like Facebook) were able to kill them in the crib.

If we're going to accept that social media is a natural monopoly: great. Regulate them strictly, as you should with any monopoly.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#57

Post by apercu »

ribosometronome wrote: post #13
apercu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta prints money as an ad company but clearly resents being one. VR was a ~$100B+ attempt to buy pivot, and it’s generated ~single-digit billions in revenue. The tech worked maybe, but the vibe sucked, and the problem was that people don’t want to live or work there. Also, Meta leadership personalities are toxic to a lot of people. Now they’re doing the same thing with AI e.g., throw money at it, overpay new talent,…

>clearly resents being one. Do they? It seems to me that they're just aware that social media and the internet is trendy and they need to be out there ready to control the next big thing if they want to put ads on it. Facebook has been dying for years. Instagram makes them more ad revenue per user than FB but it's not the most popular app of its class.

I may attribute this to a single individual in charge. I think he is very mad that he is an advertiser.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#58

Post by adventured »

TZubiri wrote: post #36
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That framing is silly. “NBC doesn’t have a television business, they have an ad business”. “Google doesn’t have a search business, they have an ad business.” “Amazon doesn’t have a retail business, they have an ad business.” It doesn’t provide any value to reframe it this way, unless you think it’s some big secret that ads are the main source of revenue for these businesses.

Restaurants don't have a food business, they have a charging people money through bills business.

They're in the food micro delivery business. They deliver food from the expo to your table. Short hop logistics specialists.

Re: Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company

#59

Post by anonymars »

chihuahua wrote: post #48
twodave wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> zuck saying he laid off poor performers (effectively screwing those people for no reason) Were they not actually performing poorly, then? Maybe I'm missing some context, but laying off poor performers is a good thing last I checked. It's identifying them that's difficult the further removed you are from the action (or lack thereof).

From what I heard, Eric Lippert was one of the layoff victims. I find it unlikely that he was actually a poor performer, since he's an industry legend.

"[My probabilistic languages] team in particular was at the point where we were regularly putting models into production that on net reduced costs by millions of dollars a year over the cost of the work.

...

We foolishly thought that we would naturally be protected from any layoffs, being a team that reduced costs of any team we partnered with.

...

The whole Probability division was laid off as a cost-cutting measure. I have no explanation for how this was justified and I note that if the company were actually serious about cost-cutting, they would have grown our team, not destroyed it."

https://ericlippert.com/2022/11/30/a-long-expected-update/#:...

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