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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

#801

Post by netcan »

alex1138 wrote: post #726
NickC25 wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meta is fundamentally a media company You were soooooo close. Meta is fundamentally a targeted advertising company, not a media company.

Are they even that? Their modus operandi has been to steal user credentials. Ads (which aren't targeted at all, the ads aren't even good, according to what people have said) are just an excuse to gather more data (Facebook syncs with your phone, it wipes out addresses in your phone book). It comes down to Zuck and who he is

The ads are effective, and the way they are effective is via targeting.

From the customer perspective, it works. The main problem is price competition for access to audiences. That's why fb revenues are what they are. The ads work, largely because ofntracmjng/targeting.

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

#803

Post by _heimdall »

dbgrman wrote: post #760
shin_lao wrote: post #676

AI is a scapegoat. These companies are bloated. That's why they are laying off people en masse.

Not just bloated, obese. These companies have an eating disorder. They can longer control it. Even after all the layoffs meta gained net weight in 2025.

2026, the year of Corporate Ozempic?

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

#804

Post by btian »

snarf21 wrote: post #756
sharadov wrote: post #755

As much as I hate Zuck - he's a ballsy CEO, he makes big bets, some work and some don't. Instagram and Whatsapp did! Heck in Asia and Latin America entire economies use Whatsapp for transacting business.

I think it is hard to call IG and WA bets. He simply bought the competition that was set to wreck his platform.

Why didn't other CEOs buy them to wreck Zuck's platform?

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

#805

Post by autaut »

matchbok3 wrote: post #782
autaut wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting 20 years and billions of dollars developing, in collaboration with research institutes like IMEC and funding from chipmakers like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. But it doesn’t fit your ideological narrative of how innovation functions so…

Where is the Silicon Valley of Europe? I'll wait for your answer.

I think it’s to their credit that they don’t have one and instead got cern. A bunch of shitty crud apps made by mediocre rent seekers that got rich on tax avoidance, gov money + research, and low interest rates vs actual ground breaking research that benefits humanity. Silicon Valley is probably the worst thing that happened to humanity between the 2008 crash and Covid. People have been figuring it out but not after they have already given these scammers permission to inspect their wallets.

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

#807

Post by maerF0x0 »

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…

Also investors are currently more interested in hearing "Business is booming and we handled it all with AI+Robotics+Automations" than "We hired people".

The sentiment is that the latter is more expensive and less flexible than the former... which seems backwards to me. (AI is expensive, robots are mostly not that adaptable to new tasks, automations only really help the most repetitive tasks and they must be rewritten/updated when the task changes)

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

#808

Post by nradov »

malfist wrote: post #735
coredog64 wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the principal/agent problem: The overhiring is incredibly difficult to unwind because it led to the creation of empires. Everyone who is not a founder has more incentive to keep the empire because it props up their comp.

How? In 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 (13%) In 2023, Meta did two layoffs, one of 10,000 (another 13.6%), one of 600 In 2024, Meta did a layoff (layoffs.fyi doesn't list the number) In 2025, Meta did three layoffs, one of 3,600 (5%), 100 and 600 people In 2026, Meta has done two layoffs, one of 200, and one of 8,000 (10%). If you can't correct overhiring in 4 years as a CEO, you've failed. If you repeatedly have to do >…

Whether it's bullshit or not, does that even matter? Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has majority voting rights. This is not a secret. Everyone who considers working for or investing in Meta is aware that hiring and firing decisions are subject to his whims.

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

#809

Post by joe_mamba »

jimbokun wrote: post #748
joe_mamba wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From witching other managers, and via LLMs, you can literally learn and interview prep for all those questions on and lie. It's not difficult.

Well if they’ve learned that much it’s a good thing. The remaining piece is to speak with some personal references to verify they did some real work.

>The remaining piece is to speak with some personal references to verify they did some real work.

Not a thing where I am. You can BS your way in these jobs and so many people did.

There's no LEETCODE for management positions, just bullshitting smooth-talk and using your connections (nepotism).

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

#810

Post by nradov »

ninjagoo wrote: post #656
TeMPOraL wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they ever pretend, and anyone ever believed that? "Agile" organization is even more of a bullshit concept than "Agile" in the team. Excepting for trivial-size, freshly formed startups, companies cannot be "Agile", because finance and legal and HR and even marketing have constrains setting the tempo - you cannot just drive them with a sprint as if it was a clock signal.

> "Agile" organization is even more of a bullshit concept than "Agile" in the team. > Excepting for trivial-size, freshly formed startups, companies cannot be "Agile", because finance and legal and HR and even marketing have constrains setting the tempo - you cannot just drive them with a sprint as if it was a clock signal. Implementations of Agile at different companies can be an issue, yes. But that is to be expect…

Enterprise methodologies like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) are explicitly designed around managing that friction. Developers may complain about the additional toil and process overhead it imposes on them, but for the organization as a whole this is sometimes the least bad option.
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