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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

#571

Post by Danox »

rsanek wrote: post #255
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…

Meta has about 10% more employees now than they did at the end of 2021. They currently have less than half the employees of Google or Apple; only a third of Microsoft. If you're right, the rest of big tech is in a much worse position.

Not Apple, but if you see Apple join the layoff party, then you know things are really bad, however Google and Microsoft like Meta seem to go through this every five or six years.

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

#572

Post by mrweasel »

renewiltord wrote: post #398
pipes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you interviewed meta engineers and found this? Or is this speculation?

I interviewed a Meta Senior SWE in 2023. Guy couldn't write the most basic Python loop. Attempts were made. I didn't expect a list comprehension. This was just a warmup exercise fizz-buzz level so everyone can feel confident and talk. Everyone just smashes it. I could have done it as a teenager. Had to call it off after 15 min of trying. It was too much. But he took it on the chin. "Yep, thanks, sorry I didn't get to…

We had the same experience with Meta engineers. One candidate had been with Meta/Facebook for seven years and had nothing to show for it. They had an incredibly hard time articulating what work they actually did. It was something related to storage, but pretty much every answer was "well, actually someone else does that part". Also same experience with basic coding, no actual skills, yet somehow manages to have a CS degree.

Someone has to be doing the actual work at Meta, but that might not be the people who are seeking out new jobs. So we get this false impression that their engineers are a bit... not good, because those are the ones actually leaving.

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

#573

Post by jastuk »

ergocoder wrote: post #536
LambdaComplex wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you hire a house cleaner, and the house cleaner doesn't do a good job, would you fire yourself from the house? What repercussions will you personally suffer?

Are you implying the 10% being fired are all bad workers? What if the house cleaner was not the problem here?

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

#574

Post by bandrami »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #556
bandrami wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any company that is seen to reduce capex right now is going to be the Bear Sterns of this cycle

Is this because you think the market will short sell them, or because capex is so worthwhile right now that a company which doesn't invest will fall fatally behind?

The former; I think there's simply not the capacity to build the infrastructure that would be required to significantly improve the current tech as much as is expected (and there may never be the capacity to build that much infrastructure).

There's a whole lot of circular funding being passed among the same dozen or so companies right now with very little actual construction or assets to show for it and at some point someone will be holding the bag when actual money is called for, and nobody wants it to be them. The parallels with both 2008 and the '90s S&L crisis are troubling.

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

#575

Post by Danox »

nomel wrote: post #421
rao-v wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, apart from Instagram, WhatsApp, Llama 1 & 2 and somehow managing to sell nearly 10M less nerdy google glasses what has Zuck done for FB?

Look at Meta's profits by year.

Meta profits are good but they’re closing in on the $100 billion dollar mark in their Meta Quest/AI fiasco just because you can afford it doesn’t mean you should do it. See another company called Oracle for a similar path.

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

#576

Post by Tarq0n »

Jensson wrote: post #399
marcosdumay wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very few government organizations here in Brazil with more than 8k people under the same management.

All of those government organizations are under the same management: the government. Subsidiaries are still under the management of the parent firm.

That's not how it works in many countries. You can have regional governments that raise their own taxes and aren't beholden to the central government organizationally, just legally.

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

#577

Post by Danox »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #416
dpc050505 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has clients and if your employees aren't incompetent sycophants they can give you actionable feedback.

Not a commentary on Zuck specifically, but many powerful people with fragile egos build an inner circle of incompetent sycophants

Very true the White House currently is an example of that.

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

#578

Post by aurareturn »

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…

Why is #1 hypothetical?

If 1 employee can do the work of 3 now but Meta's TAM can't grow 300%, then they can cut some employees.

In other words, worker productivity might be higher than what the ad business can grow into, so Meta can safely cut cost and still hit their growth targets.

Edit: I should be clear that I think #1 has been achieved for software development.

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

#579

Post by schnitzelstoat »

fevangelou wrote: post #560

Firing 10% of their workforce on the one hand. Tracking employee PC screens to supposedly train AI on the other. Get fired or get tracked. Well, isn't that convenient...

Introducing the tracking in such a public manner is probably a way to drive voluntary redundancies as it encourages people to leave.

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

#580

Post by autaut »

loeg wrote: post #479
autaut wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he going to pay the severances out of pocket? Is he going to personally help those employees get back on their feet? Is he going to make sure their families are ok? Is he stepping down? What does it look like besides cheap talk from a cheap and clueless leader? The guy is just another mediocrity who tripped into a huge pile of money and now it’s everyone’s problem while he acts as a giant baby.

> Is he going to pay the severances out of pocket? More or less? The vast majority of his personal net worth is tied up in FB stock. As to the other questions -- the severance package is pretty generous.

He is not putting the shares down himself. He is just subject to price fluctuations like everyone else — so how is he taking personal responsibility for it?
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