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Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

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

#811

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.

It may be explained more by his FOMO, he tried crypto, NFT, metaverse, VR and now AI. This feels more like correction of mistakes at pandemic than bold bet at future.

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

#813
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did all the extra employees come from? Did this result in shortages in other industries that the employees supposedly transitioned from?

IIRC, CS majors in universities grew a lot over the past 2 decades in particularly past couple years. It can be argued that the demand for graduates in other industries might have stagnated or even dropped, and it's "spread over" many different industries, so it's not really that seriously felt. But if you were hiring in the software industry during the covid peak years, you would seriously feel the shortage. I used…

There was never any shortage. Your company wasn't good at recruiting, or moved too slowly, or had a bad reputation, or was making low offers.

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

#814
post #472

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…

At my company, the executives have been saying things like "AI will let us do more with less", so they preemptively encourage attrition. Now the people with the skills to potentially automate away work (including via AI) can't get to it because they are now backlogged by doing the manual work themselves that they might otherwise be automating away. What's more: the way they "force attrition" aren't directly via layoffs which might let them target the lowest performers, but rather they give shitty pay raises across the board, which means the top performers leave as they have the most incentive to leave (they're the most able to get higher paying jobs elsewhere).

I'm not one to invoke "incompetence" willy-nilly, but I'm having a hard time explaining these policies apart from it.

Anyway, I bring this up because it didn't quite fit into your 3.5 rubric.

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

#815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment put everything into perspective. I can't name anything beyond Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp that Meta's created and I've used in the past 10 years. I've never even (knowingly) used the LLama models tbh.

If you consider Marketplace its own product it’s a massive win but they haven’t monetized it beyond some very ineffective post boosting and advertising. I honestly think they could charge 10% of list price for items over $50, plus membership levels that reduce or remove listing fees. and make a significant amount of money.

I am so disappointed that Marketplace killed craigslist. Marketplace search is awful. It is probably the worst shopping I have experienced.

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

#816
I wonder if workers are now realizing that working for a corporation that predates on the vulnerability of humans through dark patterns isn't the best career move and have been trying to push for a better agenda internally, which leads to leadership shaving off to reset culture but framing it as "efficiency".

Does anyone affected by this or that works at Meta would dare speak about it?

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

#817
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Meta had already overhired by the beginning of 2021, and the hiring spree was continuing.

Meta was over hiring engineers from about 2015, if we're being honest.

This is true, I just didn't want to admit it as someone who joined after 2015 but before 2021...

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

#818
post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard OpenClaw got over 600k lines of code vibed over 80 days. I have this theory that the bloat will follow to the full extent possible. OpenClaw has this, the OpenEye or whatever that comes on another day, with better models, will have 3 million lines of code. All of the possibilities that you mention will not come to fruition the way you'd like to, because speed is preferred over building better things, and t…

Tech debt and maintainability were important because time was of the essence in another era. If the cycles get compressed by say 95%, to hell with it, just trash the old and write everything from scratch, start from a clean slate each time?

That may be good enough for consumer facing systems. Rewrites seldom go well for enterprise systems of record because the code embodies a lot of undocumented but critical requirements. If you start vibe coding from a clean slate then all of that knowledge is lost and you've created an even bigger problem.

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

#819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although in this case Meta bought companies that were already established and successful. Google bought Android before it had released products. Google Maps was purchased, but was Where 2 actually a successful product prior to that?

I feel like you just cherry picked from my examples. YouTube was certainly successful - Google bought them because their own Google Video competitor was a flop. DoubleClick was also obviously huge. Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.

I think there is a difference in at least degree here (maybe in kind, idk) that's lost by lumping them purely on acquisition or not, but I do largely agree with your point.

But just wanted to correct for the historical record:

> Where 2 had a successful product, it just wasn't web based (nor do I think free), so didn't have anywhere near the distribution that Google enabled once the team ported it to run in a browser.

Where 2 did not have a product, successful or not. They were an unreleased demo looking for investors and luckily got into a room with Larry Page of 2004.

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

#820
post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider Marketplace its own product it’s a massive win but they haven’t monetized it beyond some very ineffective post boosting and advertising. I honestly think they could charge 10% of list price for items over $50, plus membership levels that reduce or remove listing fees. and make a significant amount of money.

I am so disappointed that Marketplace killed craigslist. Marketplace search is awful. It is probably the worst shopping I have experienced.

The disappointment needs to be directed at Craigslist, which sat on its hands and let FB eat their lunch.

And while FB marketplace search kinda sucks the algorithm is supremely effective at surfacing listings based on your searches and activity.

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