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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

#601

Post by pjmlp »

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…

1 is certainly happening in agency delivery work.

Most language translations and asset creations for CMSs are now AI driven.

In big corps delivery teams were already being reduced by relying in LEGO building with SaaS, iPaaS and serverless/microservices (aka MACH architecture), now with agents, the integrations teams get further reduced into writing the tools/skills modules instead.

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

#602

Post by citrin_ru »

sidcool wrote: post #451

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

Because in the current job market many job seekers will accept 1st offer after spending months looking for a job without any offers.

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

#604

Post by bandrami »

Barbing wrote: post #592
bandrami wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I think "1 employee can do the work of 3 now" still hasn't actually been demonstrated

I wonder what proportion[1] of knowledge workers believe they have at least one colleague who the business would be better off replacing with software and how many of them are totally wrong, or right about it! [1] and how it might be changing with new generations of models

I think the bigger issue is employees who can largely just not be replaced.

For all the hype about the 1X vs 10X distinction the real stumbling block is how many 0Xes there are out there and how frequently they tend to make it through hiring.

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

#605

Post by hansmayer »

aurareturn wrote: post #578
wisty wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> f 1 employee can do the work of 3 now but Meta's TAM can't grow 300%

If you go by the measure of LoC per employee, then your number is probably even higher, somewhere between 10-20x per employee. The problem being, producing 10.000 lines of AI-slop per day is not a good productivity measure - all it does is create more technical debt and issues that now nobody is reviewing because a) people get fatigued and at some point just wave the AI-slop through b) there is not enough manpower because people got laid off because of "AI" c) People are generally feeling irritated by being asked to review and correct AI slop. There is a societal pushback brewing and it won't be nice for the so-called AI in the end. Think about the fact that most people who are exhilirated by the "AI" are either incompetent or incompetent and old. Most of the young folks, even those not in the technical domains, firmly reject AI. When did you ever hear of a revolutionary new tech that was actively hated on by the young people?

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

Maybe in the world of WP-plugins/typo3 and other simple work, though even those are fairly complex in their own ways which the retard-LLMs will trip on fair amount of times. Not if you are doing anything remotely complex. The retard-LLMs will still either put your secrets in plain text, suggest the laziest f*ing implementation of a problem etc. It's just a shitshow nowadays, compounded by the LLM companies trying to keep the costs low (and therefore keep the "users" hooked), which they currently accomplish by shortchanging you and dumbing the LLMs down - because otherwise they'd have to charge for true cost - upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per seat - which would render their initial value proposition completely useless. Something has to give.

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

#606

Post by dnnddidiej »

inoffensivename wrote: post #446
dnnddidiej wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pilot at a major airline here: 1.5 hours of interviews with two people (recruiter and another pilot). Technical and HR-style questions, a personality test, no other homework. Blood test, background check including all prior training records that are reported to the FAA. Not a lot of work for the candidate in the interview, but it's easy to fail one too many training events or accumulate a violation and become radioac…

Thanks!

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

#607

Post by alper »

akdev1l wrote: post #373
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…

I am convinced Mark Zuckerberg does more harm than good for Facebook like literally they lucked out on the landing the business model early but it feels it has been in an ongoing decline and everything else they have tried has failed spectacularly (and particularly things Mark has put his whole weight behind) They never became anything more than the ad company

The only good things at Meta are the things they bought (Whatsapp and Instagram). They haven't made anything original in a long long time.

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

#608

Post by postexitus »

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

Name one product that Meta created over the last 10 years that mattered - beyond adtech. They can fire everyone in every team and just retain ads (tech and sales) - and some minimal setup for instagram and whatsapp and facebook and their revenue will not take a dent. So, yes, they overhired.

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

#610

Post by postexitus »

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.

Microsoft, Apple and Google have much more diverse revenue streams. Meta only makes money from Ads. Only. It's crazy.
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