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Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

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Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#81

Post by mach1ne »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #11

I 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…

I think they're also targeting the very wrong audience. Metaverse feels like a weird incarnation of Microsoft Teams - from corporate, to corporate. It's really not for young people. One has difficulty finding examples from history where something new was first adopted by older people and then by younger folk. Even Facebook started as a social network for university students and then spread across the population generation by generation. Meta has apparently forgotten the prime rule of trendsetting; it must always be done by cool people.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#82

Post by threatripper »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #11

I 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…

Is the Metaverse something that wants to be done and Meta is its birth helper OR is Meta inventing the Metaverse because it needs something immensely big for its business strategy?

My feeling is that Meta is rather running away from a failing business and less running towards a new green meadow.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#83

Post by signa11 »

Rastonbury wrote: post #43

Cutting twice is terrible for morale, anyone who survived the first is now worried, wondering when it's going to stop. I doubt much has materially changed since the first round, it was only a handful of months ago. Cut hard once, it won't be perfect, you can starting hiring again like BAU priority places that are breaking. Now this is drawn out 6 months of employees waiting for the sword to fall

csco seems to have used that 'strategy' when the layoffs first hit circa around 2000's or thereabouts.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#84

Post by seanhunter »

moomoo11 wrote: post #48
seanhunter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your teams are 20 people or something dumb just fire everyone and start over This is one of the most irrational things I’ve ever read on here so congratulations I guess. The people in the team are not the ones to blame if the teams are too big, you are (if you are in charge). Therefore if you actually want to fix the problem, the person you need to fire before starting over is yourself.

I’m ESL and the context of my comment is management and my opinion on what company should do. Get rid of engineering managers. And yes. Fire all the management who caused shit to get that bad. I 100% stand by that.

Fire the management who caused shit to go bad != fire everyone.

If you actually are sincere about fixing things, actually finding the causes is very important.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#85

Post by lordnacho »

htag wrote: post #14
AlphaCharlie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only higher than other big tech companies because they have so much difficulty hiring new grad. it's what's holding the funnel together, the moment comp drops compared to the others they will lose a ton of candidates.

Since ~2016 Meta employment has signaled to me that someone values high compensation above anything else. This view has become so popular that choosing to work at Meta indicates you are fine broadcasting this signal. There might be some exceptions for those working on Oculus, but it's not a blanket exception.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Whatever you think of the company that's no denying they have interesting problems to work on, such as AI, plus ordinary big tech scaling. Plus you don't know whether a person even had other offers.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#86

Post by bitL »

typon wrote: post #69
achow wrote: post #63

Earlier 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?"

Meta AI employees will privately tell you Google, Open AI and a bunch of others are much more advanced than them. For some reason Google can't capitalize on it and it can't be because "AI is not in their DNA"...

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#87

Post by vrosas »

mrphoebs wrote: post #53
moomoo11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is certainly scope for a more intelligent and nuanced discussion to be had here than what reads like a junior engineer's half baked rant on the uselessness of engineering managers. Yes there are awful engineering managers just as there are great ones who are force multipliers for their teams. I've known great engineering managers who were great engineers who naturally became an interface for their teams and som…

I can’t wait to meet one of these mythical force multiplying engineering managers one day. Over the last decade as a senior engineer my experience has been that a mediocre engineer will begin to compensate for their shortcomings by becoming more involved in project management, usually spending most of the engineering time in jira land. Then their manager, who likely did the same damn thing, says “hey you look like management material!” and the cycle continues.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#88

Post by yibg »

moomoo11 wrote: post #18
abledon wrote: post #15

Engineering 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…

Aren't you just replacing the word manager with the word "team lead"? What in your view is the difference between the responsibilities of a manager vs a team lead if the team still reports to the team lead?

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#89

Post by seanhunter »

hansvm wrote: post #49
airstrike wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, twitter.com seems to manage to continue running fine with only 25% of staff left. I'm sure others are looking at that and going "hmmm"

Am I misremembering reading about a major prolonged outage a few days ago?

You aren’t talking about this major prolonged outage two weeks ago https://www.techradar.com/news/live/twitter-outtage-what-hap...

Or this outage today https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/story/twitter-outage-tw... because that one was brief

YOu might be talking about this one https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23215529/twitter-down-out...

…or maybe this one https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/16/twitter_okays_cannabi...

It’s sort of hard to tell because everything’s working so well and is so fine that there are quite a few outages to choose from.

Re: Another Round of Layoffs at Meta

#90

Post by yibg »

moomoo11 wrote: post #66
mrphoebs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is certainly scope for a more intelligent and nuanced discussion to be had here than what reads like a junior engineer's half baked rant on the uselessness of engineering managers. Yes there are awful engineering managers just as there are great ones who are force multipliers for their teams. I've known great engineering managers who were great engineers who naturally became an interface for their teams and som…

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)…

This whole thing comes across as "I'm smart and everyone else is stupid".
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