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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

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

#521

Post by loeg »

decimalenough wrote: post #509
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.

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.

The figure I've seen floated is $6B, but yeah, same idea.

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

#522

Post by dbgrman »

culi wrote: post #470
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

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

its not a 'concerted campaign'. meta laid off 4300 in 2025, but by the end of the year was actaully ~4800 higher than before. If that is not 'over hiring', i dont know what is. The headcount went from 74K in dec2024 to 78K in dec2025, even WITH the layoffs.

There is no "workforce reduction". its just "we need new faces around here". Hire-to-fire.

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

#523

Post by loeg »

bandrami wrote: post #516
decimalenough wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Though not all of that capex is cash; there's a whole phantom wampum AI economy where the big players are trading promissory notes for compute that doesn't exist yet (and may never exist) some time in the future and booking it as revenue.

Maybe you're thinking of AWS/Azure/Oracle? Meta isn't selling their compute.

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

#524

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #517
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 profi…

Where did all the extra employees come from? Did this result in shortages in other industries that the employees supposedly transitioned from?

These West Coast tech companies had some of the highest salaries on the planet, so yes, they took employees from other locales/areas.

But also, while there have been layoffs in engineering teams, Ive seen a lot of "support staff" get absolutely obliterated. Things like "agile coaches", "technical project managers", UX testers, marketing roles, etc. etc. While I've seen most of my laid off soft engineer friends find new jobs relatively quickly, I've seen lots of folks in these other roles suffer long bouts of unemployment, and often leave tech entirely. It's these folks I feel the most for. A lot of them were making low 6 figures 10-15 years ago, and now many of them have no hope of making that much in their careers again because companies have vastly reduced the number of those roles.

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

#525

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

happymellon wrote: post #487
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the case with most tech companies. Google bought Android, YouTube, DoubleClick, Maps, etc. etc.

Although in this case Meta bought companies that were already established and successful. Google bought Android before it had released products. Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?

I feel like you just cherry picked from my examples. YouTube was certainly successful - Google bought them because their own Google Video competitor was a flop. DoubleClick was also obviously huge. Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.

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

#526

Post by tshaddox »

culi wrote: post #470
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

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

Well, one could start by looking at how their total employee counts have changed between now and the beginning of the pandemic.

I’d be surprised if the multiple rounds of layoffs has left them with fewer total employees than January 2020.

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

#527

Post by Ekaros »

sidcool wrote: post #451

Why would any candidate consider Meta for their career when the CEO flounders money and then lays off recklessly.

Making it 2-5 years there sounds like reasonable pile of money. And I don't think getting fired in one of these big layoff rounds is too big black mark.

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

#528

Post by thrawa8387336 »

culi wrote: post #470
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

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

They overhired, made a mess with people who are not very passionate. Then they fired but they fired all kinds, including some very good ones. Then they are still stuck in that loop and thinking AI is a solution to that

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

#529

Post by jongjong »

testing22321 wrote: post #149
trjordan wrote: post #20

It's an honest surprise that this isn't spun as "internal AI efficiency gains." They want the efficiency, of course there's AI component, but they're not pre-claiming victory. Neat. It's worth remembering that there's an _actual_ underlying economic problem here. Interest rates are up. AI spending is expensive. A dollar invested in a company needs to do _more_ than it did 5 years ago, relative to sitting in treasury…

> They're ... laying off people, maximizing profits, and giving up. Cowards. To play devil’s advocate, what they’re doing is not remotely cowardly, it is the entire point of their existence They have a lever they can pull that will increase profits and the stock price. Why the hell else does a company like Meta even exist? It sure as hell isn’t to provide jobs to meat bags, and anyone that thinks it is needs a very q…

This makes a good point. A lot of people think that big tech has a duty to provide jobs to smart, ambitious people.

They assume that we live in some kind of socialist system. They feel like it's a kind of deal; they accept all the regulations, monopolies bureaucratic bullshit and, in return, the corporate monopolies pay them to keep quiet and stay out of politics.

I understand the sentiment but what's horrible about this mindset is that these people think it's OK to support corrupt political power to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone who doesn't work for a big corporate monopoly. They think that all the smart people work for big tech and everyone else is trash... And they set the criteria for entry into the big tech monopoly club (I.e. screenings and interviews). But the irony is that they're trash! Their pseudo-socialist view of the word is crooked.

The reason I support UBI is because I don't see a meaningful difference between ambitious people and random people. Every generation from boomers onwards are spoiled brats. Mostly monetizing and gatekeeping the ingenuity and labor of past generations by playing dumb social games. The whole system doesn't make sense. As meritocracy declines, the rewards increase and false narratives fill the gaps... They'll have you believe that the person who painted Facebook HQ's walls contributed more to society than the guy who actually invented the paint...

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

#530

Post by tshaddox »

John23832 wrote: post #407
torginus wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is an extremely competitive landscape, with competitors rising overnight. Google, Apple and Microsoft dominate the world with their products and platforms. Facebook & WhatsApp certainly doesnt.

> Social media is an extremely competitive landscape, with competitors rising overnight. This is not true at all. There are two players. FB/Instagram and TikTok. Using one does not preclude using the other. Other than tiktok, who was the last new player in social? > Google, Apple and Microsoft dominate the world with their products and platforms. Facebook & WhatsApp certainly doesnt. Whole countries literally run on…

You don’t consider YouTube to be social media?
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