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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

bloomberg.com

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Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#501

Post by rvz »

chis wrote: post #33

I'd guess AI has made the average SWE around twice as productive at this point. This is a sort of efficiency shock, where companies suddenly need to find twice as much productive work to do or start firing employees. FB probably had a bunch of slack to absorb this but ultimately it's just hard to find that much work all at once. I predict that tech companies will hire back a lot of this lost headcount over time. Alth…

> I predict that tech companies will hire back a lot of this lost headcount over time.

After the AI race and the large IPOs of 2026, this will be the case. The hiring pipeline will be a lot slower than 2021 and will be more controlled.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#502

Post by reverius42 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #498
ryandrake wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the year 2040, they’ll still be using the same excuse. “BigTech lays off another 10,000 from all the overhiring done 20 years ago during COVID!”

It’s almost as if a group of 80,000 dynamic humans in a wild uncharted environment might mean decisions are made that have to be re-evaluated in a year!

And then how many years in a row after that can you keep blaming the single re-evaluated decision?

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#503

Post by LambdaComplex »

wmf wrote: post #394
dlev_pika wrote: post #274

Is this what Zuck meant when he said he “takes full responsibility” for spending 80 billion in the wrong direction?

Taking responsibility doesn't mean paying people to do nothing.

So what does it mean, concretely? What repercussions will he personally suffer?

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#504

Post by chabons »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #480
culi wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People bring up "overhiring" every single time. We've had like 3 years of these massive layoffs already. How many "corrections" do they need? I'm beginning to feel like the "overhiring" line is a concerted campaign

It is no doubt a campaign or at least a meme. It seems basically impossible for everyone to have overhired, for the simple reason that qualified workers do not appear and disappear from nowhere. There is a population of qualified workers in the software sector, and only new grads and retirement can move the needle significantly. So, if someone overhired then someone else must have done without, all things considered.…

“There is a population of qualified workers […]”

In my experience, this is not true. Demand for software engineers has been so high, and pay so high as a result, that it’s pulling in workers from adjacent industries. The total software-qualified workforce is larger than the set currently working in software, and people with transferrable skills move in and out of software as incentives dictate.

A number of my current and former coworkers are from math and physics backgrounds (CFD, energy, etc…). These are folks that before might have stayed in academia, or ended up in aerospace, defense, or other engineering fields.

If everyone over hired, demand drops, and companies drop pay as a result, I’m sure we’ll see some folks in software with transferrable skills move to other industries.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#505

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wisty wrote: post #472
bandrami wrote: post #458

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

3 and a half ways AI takes jobs: 1. By making workers unnecessary (largely hypothetical right now?) 2. By companies spending big on AI, but it didn't pay off yet so they need to cut back on something else. 3. AI is a good excuse for layoffs they want to do anyway. Also - the investors would rather hear "AI" than "oops we are in trouble so we need to do layoffs". For example, if you spent a lot of billions on a 2nd li…

It's #3 - it's always #3.

All of these tech companies (with perhaps the notable exception of Apple) massively overhired during the pandemic, and that overhiring was on top of a decade+ of the ZIRP era. So there are 2 main drivers of these layoffs:

1. Correcting pandemic overhiring

2. In the ~2010-2022 timeframe, tech companies poured all this money into speculative bets that never went anywhere, at least from a profit perspective (think Amazon's Alexa devices division, Google Stadia, and perhaps most famously the Metaverse itself). All those diversions are now toast, and they employed a ton of people. The only speculative bet that is now "allowed" is AI, which is one reason why I giggle whenever I hear people trying to defend their companies or projects by adding "AI" somewhere in the name.

So perhaps my second point is similar to your #2, but I think the important difference is that the end of the ZIRP era would have caused companies to kill these inherently unprofitable projects even if AI never came on the scene.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#506

Post by Matumio »

lbreakjai wrote: post #353
dnnddidiej wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a pilot or doctor or cop do in terms of interviews, take homes etc.?

Pilots and doctors are exhaustively certified for a very narrow set of work. A cop gets a title, to perform a job that's identical in every part of the country. Software development is neither exhaustively certified, nor narrow, nor perfectly transposable. Developers want a 15 minutes interview, but also scream "Would you ask a builder if he has experience with blue hammers specifically?" when they get denied an inte…

My doctor probably thinks we software developers do a very narrow job. And she is kind of right, we always turn up with those back problems from sitting too much, or RSI or whatever. While doctors have all those medical specializations and different roles and employers.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#507

Post by alexjplant »

dlev_pika wrote: post #274

Is this what Zuck meant when he said he “takes full responsibility” for spending 80 billion in the wrong direction?

I have no idea whether he said that but it reminds me of something. I'm rewatching (by which I mean "playing in the background while I do other stuff") the HBO show "Silicon Valley" and it literally has this in it.

> Goodbyes are always hard, especially when I am the one saying goodbye. Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye...to the entire Nucleus division.

> But make no mistake, though they are the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure. It is my fault, I trusted them to get the job done, but that is the price of leadership.

Mike Judge is a masterful satirist.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#508

Post by whatsupdog »

fmbb wrote: post #490
loeg wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a justification, but still -- they save single digit billions doing this, while AI capex is $150B (same timeframe) and RL spend is $16B. Feels like you could make the same cut from AI capex and barely notice a difference.

Imagine the productivity gains if they just spent $150B on booze and cake for employees!

And coke. Not the cold drink.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#509

Post by decimalenough »

loeg wrote: post #476
bandrami wrote: post #458

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

Yeah, this is a justification, but still -- they save single digit billions doing this, while AI capex is $150B (same timeframe) and RL spend is $16B. Feels like you could make the same cut from AI capex and barely notice a difference.

My gut feel was that you can't be right, but it looks like you are: cutting 8000 employees * $500k/year total cost to company (rough but useful ballpark figure) is "only" $4B.

Cross-checking against actual expenditure, Meta spent $118B total last year, with the second largest component of total spending being stock comp at $42B, of which vast slabs went to the top leadership that's presumably also not getting fired.

Re: Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

#510

Post by glouwbug »

bandrami wrote: post #458

This is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.

Funny how AI took all the jobs, but not from automation
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