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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

#541

Post by Saline9515 »

fragmede wrote: post #276
oytis wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes cutting edge hardware, at least two operating systems and lots of user applications. Google makes search, cloud, a decent office suite with the largest mail server in the world and of course cutting edge AI. It's easy to see why either of them needs twice as many people as Meta

Whatsapp powers entire economies, outside of North America. And then there's Instagram. If we're going by that reasoning, Meta's undersized.

Whatsapp is 5 years late in terms of features if you compare it to Telegram. It is here simply because of platform economics, nothing else.

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

#542

Post by matwood »

Rapzid wrote: post #296
disillusioned wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but, just objectively speaking, look at how many _more_ business lines and units and actual PRODUCTS each of those other companies ship in comparison. Meta has... Facebook. Instagram. Threads, if you want to count it. What'sApp. The ad-tech that powers those things. A black hole of a VR division that has since been eviscerated after billions burned. An AR/device divison that sells glasses. And a burgeoning supe…

Totally. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that if I had to pick a FAANG to put all my retirement savings into Meta would absolutely not be my pick. Heck, if I was forced to either short or invest Meta with all my retirement savings now betting on it's value in 25 years.. I'd short it.

> Heck, if I was forced to either short or invest Meta with all my retirement savings now betting on it's value in 25 years.. I'd short it.

Short of social media being classified as something like alcohol or cigarettes, you will lose money on this trade. You’re betting against ingrained human nature.

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

#543

Post by Ifkaluva »

plemer wrote: post #447
tech234a wrote: post #437

During mass layoffs, why haven't companies offered employees the opportunity to drop down to a four day work week? I'd think many would take the extra day off each week, even if it included a proportional reduction in pay.

You’d have to go company-wide to sync schedules and norms. Not just opt in. Many would not like a 20% pay cut. The best talent would disproportionately leave. Also, theoretically Meta is getting rid of their worst performers, so their cuts and declines in productivity would not be proportional, especially as the cuts inspire fear to motivate productivity from the remaining employees.

Does it inspire fear to motivate productivity?

Haha, no, it inspires motivation for finding a new job. Interview prep takes time!

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

#544

Post by blitzar »

whatsupdog wrote: post #508
fmbb wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And coke. Not the cold drink.

you get another taste of coke every time you clear 100 tickets. not the cold drink.

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

#546

Post by AbbeFaria »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #524
givemeethekeys wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

My experience working at Big tech companies is that people with roles like “agile coaches", "technical project managers", UX testers add questionable value. And the QA is usually outsourced to service companies like MindTree, TCS etc anyway.

Lot of these companies are bloated from having way too many Engineers anyway. Once you have mature software that brings in bagfuls of money, you don’t need that many people to keep the ship steady. I have seen this first hand at MSFT, we started a new team back in 2019 and it probably had ~40 people full time across US and India. By 2024 when I left, we had about 20 people in India who could easily run the service, the US team was dissolved and they moved to other teams in MSFT. The fact was that new features were few and the team was in KTLO mode. I have seen the reverse happen too, the team I was working on was dissolved and we were moved to different teams and everything moved to the US last year, managers were converted to ICs and a few folks were probably fired but it was a ~10 year old service that didn’t need that many people to run, even more so after AI tools became big last year.

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

#547

Post by xg15 »

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.

I think in several ways the promises of AI to leadership is taking jobs not what AI is actually doing.

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

#548

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

stephbook wrote: post #452
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they bought Insta and Whatsapp. I mean, that's not nothing, buying a successful business and keeping it successful for over a decade. But neither Zuck nor Meta made those platforms; they were both established successes in their own right before acquisition.

Only The Zuck saw the value though. Why didn't MS, Amazon or Google buy insta? Or some Softbank vehicle?

Probably because Instagram wasn't a direct competitor to any of those other companies (except maybe Google+, which wasn't even a year old at the time that FB bought Instagram). I don't know why softbank didn't get them.

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

#550

Post by drivebyhooting »

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…

I wish WhatsApp would get nationalized. I absolutely hate having to use it.
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