Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta lays off 11,000 people

about.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 1001 posts

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#881

Post by mempko »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #472
lapcat wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking responsibility would mean resigning as CEO, for example. Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute power, can't be voted out by the board of directors, and thus has no accountability for his actions and mistakes. But just saying that you're taking responsibility is not actually taking responsibility. It's empty words.

I don't agree with that take at all. No leader would be able to learn from mistakes or grow if they had to metaphorically commit Seppuku every time they made a mistake by resigning or abdicating their authority. Taking responsibility would mean owning the situation as being caused by you, and critically evaluating your actions to see if there were different paths you could have taken given the same information, or if…

We got rid of kings in politics for a reason. Businesses will eventually learn these lessons, even if it's a hundred years later.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#882

Post by JohnBooty »

asdfman123 wrote: post #749
princevegeta89 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta may sound like an unethical company frequently from a product standpoint, but Zuckerberg is a very good guy in general and he treats employees very well.

People are multifaceted. I'm sure he is good to his employees, like people are describing, but that ain't it. He's repeatedly betrayed user trust, and eventually what goes around comes around.

    People are multifaceted. I'm sure he is good to 
    his employees, like people are describing, but that ain't it.
This is refreshing to read. I would like to see more of this rather than "Zuck good" or "Zuck bad."

Of course, for those immediately impacted and hurt/angered by his actions I certainly wouldn't blame anybody for venting.

But it would be much more productive to talk about "thing Zuck did good" or "thing Zuck did bad."

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#883

Post by conductr »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

I live in a oil rich area and there's a large economy of well paid folks attached to it. They all understand it's boom and bust. They get paid really well when it's booming. Then they take the L when it's busting. All to say, I think people need to come to terms with the fact they weren't being paid well due to their sheer brilliance but due to the risk they assumed by joining a boom and bust industry. Nobody was lured into a job at FB under unfair circumstances and I'm sure they're not exiting on unfair circumstances. Does it suck to be in a cyclical bust period, does it hurt worse that it's in large part self inflicted by Zuck. Of course, of course.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#884

Post by thrown_22 »

randomsearch wrote: post #323
ericd wrote: post #284

Sorry for all the people who’ve lost their jobs, but I’m excited to see the awesome world-changing stuff they’ll make now that they’re not spending their time building FB/Instagram.

Do you think that great, world-changing, folks go to Facebook to sit on a big salary? if they were going to do something awesome they probably wouldn't have been working there. now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be different

From what I hear on the grapevine the people getting laid off today are the people who would have gone on wall street 20 years ago.

>now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be different

The culture in google isn't any better. Smart people who want to do things haven't gone there since 2012.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#885

Post by xvector »

JohnAaronNelson wrote: post #863
bergenty wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Facebook (and social media in general) has made the world a more divided place full of sadder and angrier people. He runs a company that optimizes for that scenario while accruing unimaginable sums of capital, and he doubled down with Meta. Hmm I wonder why some people are not fans.

Meta has been amazing and enables me to talk to family members anywhere in the world easily.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#886

Post by abeppu »

lapcat wrote: post #444
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #246

> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in practice. Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership, does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a multi-billionai…

Taking responsibility would mean resigning as CEO, for example. Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute power, can't be voted out by the board of directors, and thus has no accountability for his actions and mistakes. But just saying that you're taking responsibility is not actually taking responsibility. It's empty words.

> Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute power

Absolutely this. Others in this thread are saying that the fact of having lost a lot of money is enough for him to be "accountable". But IMU the specific arrangement with Meta class B vs class A shares is that the group of other institutional investors lost _more_ but didn't have any ability to influence decisions, replace the CEO, etc. Zuckerberg's large on-paper loss isn't accountability for decisions he made, but is just the risk of being a wealthy person with a lopsided portfolio.

Both because of his role in deciding to hire so much, and because he's dead set on pursuing a metaverse vision which is controversial, I think "accountability" would require him to at least make it possible for other shareholders to vote on proposals on an equal footing.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#887

Post by sweezyjeezy »

rossjudson wrote: post #874
Leires wrote: post #690

I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me to never use their services. I hope they implode as a company. I happily said no when people from meta approached me on LinkedIn.

You seem very sure of what you know, and very confident about how the people working at Meta think and act. Do you have any direct experience? Or know anyone who works there?

I think they were making a statement about the company not the staff.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#888

Post by underwater »

chasd00 wrote: post #636
mattmaroon wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that’s about it. He’s lost about $90b in net worth. I suppose you can debate whether that’s punishment enough or not when you’ve got another $38b left or whatever. But I’ll tell you this from experience: lasting people off because you chose to grow too fast is really, really hard. I’ve done it, though in my case it was a lot fewer people and I actually knew and loved them all. If I had to lay off 11,000 people I…

He's lost a lot but it's not like he's having to ask his wife to stop going out to lunch with her friends. There's a level of wealth where the numbers just stop having any real meaning. $1B is still multiple lifetimes of the most decadent luxury currently possible.

His wife is a pediatrician. She can pay her own way.

Re: Meta lays off 11,000 people

#889

Post by Lutger »

gfd wrote: post #704
Leires wrote: post #690

I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me to never use their services. I hope they implode as a company. I happily said no when people from meta approached me on LinkedIn.

Not saying it makes it okay, but every company in existence does this to some extent. Everyone does A/B testing with the intent to alter user behavior (aka psychology) to increase their profits.

I doubt that the mentioned 'psychological experiments' are just A/B testing. There is a very strong case to be made that Trump and Brexit would not have happened without Facebook, and those are just two examples.
Post reply on HN