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Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
71–80 of 239 posts
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#72Engineering Managers will also begin to code again [1] [1] https://twitter.com/TitterTakeover/status/162873730347973836...
This whole management heavy culture needs to F off. 9/10 people who wants to be a manager are awful as software engineers and they know this is the only way they can stay in the game. Out of those who do become engineering managers it seems all they do is talk a bunch of nonsense and add tremendous levels of roadblocks because they suck at understanding the actual technical problems and I’ll be honest. They’re usuall…
It seems you’re talking about bad managers.
My managers are very good. They act somewhat in-between a coach and a secretary, and never muddle in technical details that they don’t understand. They try doing small-chunked tasks that don’t fit a developer’s schedule.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook can, and still could totally buy Unity. This is something that they've discussed years before the pandemic or metaverse hype. https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1619818349525086208?s=... From internal emails from Zuck^. Also has a bonus glimpse into their VR/AR strategy
This makes a ton of sense because a lot of Unity's business is in their ad platform, not engine licensing. Horizon Worlds is written in Unity, and it gives them full control over their hardware/software platform. It would do a lot of harm to Unity's relationship with smaller developers though, to Godot's benefit.
Unity has already done a lot of harm to Unity's reputation.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand at all where you're coming from. Phones with a SM8450 (Snapdragon 8 gen 1) were available in January, 2022. Phones with A16 were available in September 2022. Phones with a SM8550 (Snapdragon 8 gen 2) were available in January, 2023. You're saying it is unreasonable to compare the last two (4 months apart), and instead the valid comparison is between the first two (8 months apart). That doesn't seem…
You pretty much described the game's timeline, in order for a phone available in September, you have to compete all resources as everybody is competing for the holiday shopping season, the EVT/DVT probably are done latest in May otherwise you will see a major news piece says Apple is having difficulties doing ABC. However, if you push the release date to a few months later into early next year, all the resources alon…
Holiday sales are big, they're not bigger than the rest of the year. Samsung were targeting Mobile World Congress in February for the main Galaxy line phones basically from the start (from Galaxy S2).
I was a bit dubious about the benchmarks posted earlier in the thread, for the last decade we're used to Apple having such a long lead that timing didn't matter. But given how hard you're pushing this "it's unfair to compare the currently available phones" angle, I guess the benchmarks are legit and they really have lost the lead.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you are wrong. I do think vr is Sony's to lose, though. The number of PlayStations they have in consumers houses is insane. And the new vr2 is quite impressive.
It’s also $150 more than the Quest 2 which has also been out for 2.5 years, I don’t really think it’s going to put any sort of dent into the Quest 2s numbers. There’s about 7 million PS5s sold in the last quarter and about 1 million Quest 2s sold in Q2 last year. I somehow doubt that every one of, or even 1/7th of those PS5 owners will spend the cost of a console on PSVR so I would argue that it’s still very much Met…
Folks I know that have PlayStations completely overlaps people willing to play with VR. Folks I know on Facebook... Not so much.
They made a solid move into vr. But vr will be gaming well before it is anything else. To try and break into that market as anything else is just not a likely entry.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excerpt from this 2015 email.. "An innovation brand comes from building tangible new products. Our work in VR/AR is the best example we have. Our core social networking work is no longer new, Internet.org is extending something rather than inventing it, and AI is not yet tangible ... succeeding in VR/AR has the most innovation potential in the next 5-10 years." > AI is not yet tangible Did Meta bet on the wrong horse…
FAIR has been one of the best AI labs in the world, with one of the godfathers of AI leading it. What do you mean by "bet on the wrong horse?"
Not spend $10B/year on AI, not change the name of company from Facebook to 'AIBook', not launch equivalent of ChatGPT instead buy Occulus and then launch MetaQuest.. and similar such bets?
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#77I imagine Meta has a harder time recruiting then their peer companies, because of their reputation and the moral hazard. I wonder how much investment it will take them to get staff levels back to where they are now. It really feels like they are peaking as a company.
if you compare Meta to wall street firms and a bunch of other rent-seeking firms, Mata is actually causing much less harm. Somehow those other worse companies get a free pass.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, and I'm a staff+ level engineer who has worked at darling unicorns and big media/tech and made a ton of money. I earned that equity payoff. Now I'm working on my own projects and paying for myself to live in SF, so you're free to have whatever opinion. I know what I'm saying, and out of a dozen plus managers I've worked with over just the last 6 years (re-orgs because they have way too much time on their hands)…
I don't know why you feel the need to give people your background/ability/level to bolster your argument. I'm sure you can string together a coherent argument without the need for an appeal to authority. I'm not calling you a junior engineer, merely observing that the quality of the argument you are making being worthy of a junior engineer's rant. >The bigger companies get, the worse quality of talent that comes in.…
Because I can? Also I don’t have power right now so I go to HN at such times to kill time.
As for the game, I’m all in. I love the game and it’s fun. I’m super competitive and have no problem going back to lobby after a bad game to find a new lobby. I’m playing ranked/hardcore/we it’s called, not single player or un ranked. I’m not a gamer so idk the terms.
As for the late stagers it’s just my observation. It’s what I have observed and they definitely spend more time doing the same things. Usually because they’re doing anything but the work. They have nothing to lose nor any tangible stake.
At small scale there’s no ego. Software engineers answer support queries and help with sales. The goal is to turn your shares from a penny or less to $100.
At late stage is when all the middle management bloat comes in.
You add more and more levels where the level above just wants high level updates. Then managers have associate, manager, sr manager levels. Then you have director, associate director, etc. each level is a sad reminder of what could have been possible. People are more concerned with becoming managers instead of contributing. It’s why many companies become stagnant imo.
Personally I’m done working at companies bigger than 5k people. I was already feeling the pain at like 2-3k people. I can’t imagine working somewhere with 50k plus people. Sounds like hell.
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#79Has anyone questioned why we should trust this self-promotional post (links to their newsletter) that provides no other detail?
generally, this is a reputation thing
Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta
#80I would not invest in Meta's metaverse future. It feels like Windows Mobile. Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't have the hardware/software edge (that Apple coincidentally also has this time around) to really make the idea work. The headsets are not going to revolutionize much running Facebook games on budget Qualcomm SoCs, and Facebook cant buy an Unreal Engine or an M2 P…
They don't have the enthusiasm I don't think, and I believe that is where it falls flat. The technology is not currently something that everyone wants and definitely not something everyone needs.
VR is not good at general computing yet, and the form factor and way you engage with it means people won't be using it in the same way they use TVs, game consoles or smart phones. Mass adoption takes apealing to the lowest common denominator and VR doesn't do that, which is eventually going to be an issue of fashion as much as utility.
No one wants to sit on a bus in a Quest headset, no one wants to sit alone when their friends are in the same room, no one wants to look like a dork at work. Mass adoption is no where near happening to the current state of the art, we have more technology leaps and form factor pivots before we arrive at something a mass adopted social network would work, let alone something aiming to replace segments of business and commerce use cases.