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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

#881

Post by happymellon »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #525
happymellon wrote: post #487

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 "cherry picked" from your examples because they weren't really good examples.

You said

> buying a successful business and keeping it successful for over a decade.

Meta bought already successful companies.

Google has purchased successful businesses, but they also purchased companies that weren't and managed to get them into massive money makers.

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

#882

Post by happymellon »

magicalist wrote: post #819
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed, I think they used bad examples as neither Android or Where 2 were successful, but it also shows that Google has done a mix of buying something successful to fill a gap or find someone with a good tech that they help to get over the line and make successful.

Meta has not shown the second part.

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

#883

Post by hansmayer »

jeremyjh wrote: post #855
hansmayer wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you really should give it a try. That's cute, I hope you enjoy that high, it's really impressive at first - fyi -I've been using GH Copilot since early days (invited to early access) AND paying it for my entire company ever since MS published the first commercial plan. All the way to the latest entshittification drama with Opus 4.6 being pulled away and Opus 4.7 taxed at 7.5x rate. Yeah, its great for quick try…

>That's cute, What kind of smug asshole says something like this? If you think early days of GH Copilot are remotely relevant to what is happening now, we do not live in the same world.

> If you think early days of GH Copilot are remotely relevant to what is happening now

Let's learn some English grammar, I had said: "I've been using GH Copilot since early days" . Translated from plain English: "have been using..." = *an action or state starting in the past AND continuing UP TO the present time*. I did not say "I used it only during the early days and never again". Plus my team. Honestly - and it's only a hypothesis at this point in time I cannot prove, but I meet more and more people whose usage of LLMs seems to be seriously impacting their reading comprehension and writing skills. Do some LLM-detox, I mean this without any kind of disrespect.

> What kind of smug asshole says something like this?

I've also noticed over the years, the folks who get this offended are usually those who are uncertain about their opinion. I simply found your statement cute, that's all. You are obviously in the early stages of using it and I am assuming using it to alleviate your own little, relatively simple tasks in your job which otherwise would have been overburdening for you. It's only human to try and do so, but it hardly describes "productivity" the way you seem to think it does.

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

#884

Post by AlexeyBelov »

jeffbee wrote: post #235
hintymad wrote: post #205

Let's be honest, Meta over hired. Big time. If anyone ever interviewed a few Meta engineers, he would easily see that a large percentage of them had really small, and sometimes bullshit scopes. As a result, such engineers couldn't articulate what they do in Meta, couldn't deep dive into their own tech stacks, nor could solve common-sense design questions when they just deviated a bit from those popular interview ques…

Strongly held but apparently not popular opinion: candidates should not be expected, and should refuse, to discuss confidential internals of their former employers.

What is confidential, exactly? I once had a contract that said that I cannot discuss any technology I used for two years after the contract ends. _Any technology_. So, git. And Postgres and so on.

It's completely normal in tech circles to talk about technology.

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

#885

Post by AlexeyBelov »

userbinator wrote: post #835
userbinator wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has to build, test, deploy, and maintain that app. It also has a back-end. Someone has to build and maintain those servers as well. ...and these days, someone has to justify their continued employment, hence guaranteeing that said app and its related systems will be subjected to constant trendchasing and the inevitable resultant enshittification. It's otherwise perfectly possible to create such an ordering sy…

Apparently the only counter to truth is downvoting. How predictable.

Everyone who's getting downvotes says it's "for truth". Never is.

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

#886

Post by jastuk »

ergocoder wrote: post #843
jastuk wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying the 10% being fired are all bad workers? What if the house cleaner was not the problem here?

Ok, let's continue the analogy. The house cleaners weren't the problem. They are the best of the best at cleaning the pool. You have the pool but now want to get rid of the pool. You thought you liked the pool but you don't. It was your own mistake for wanting the pool and changing your mind. Would you fire yourself from the house? You did make a mistake.

The missing bit is where you say "I take full responsibility for this situation", to the cleaners who's lives are impacted by this significantly more than yours.

> Would you fire yourself from the house?

You keep pushing this false framing/binary for some reason. You made a bad call, you lost the money, that's a given (a passive if you will). Where's the active "taking responsibility" part? That's the main critique.

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

#887

Post by AlexeyBelov »

autaut wrote: post #435
matchbok3 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a reason why there are no innovative companies in Europe. If you make it hard to fire someone you make it hard to hire someone. Companies won't spin up risky projects if they can't spin them down. This is why Europe continues to fall behind the US and China. Accepting the mediocrity is abdicating the leadership of the world to China. If you like that, good for you. But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovat…

You have brain poisoning from reading too much slop online. >But I doubt the low-growth, low-innovation world of Europe will make the next iPhone, AI, or chip. >chip Do you realize that the cutting edge in chip technology is a Dutch company

It's a 30-something day old account. An obvious troll. Just don't engage.

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

#888

Post by [deleted] »

shimman wrote: post #796
gnabgib wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the 3 version of your account is going to fare better than the last[0] if you don't find a better way to contribute to the community. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=matchbok

I like how the account is just nothing but attacking workers while supporting the rich, classic VC mindset.

[deleted]

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

#889

Post by jeremyjh »

hansmayer wrote: post #883
jeremyjh wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's cute, What kind of smug asshole says something like this? If you think early days of GH Copilot are remotely relevant to what is happening now, we do not live in the same world.

> If you think early days of GH Copilot are remotely relevant to what is happening now Let's learn some English grammar, I had said: "I've been using GH Copilot since early days" . Translated from plain English: "have been using..." = *an action or state starting in the past AND continuing UP TO the present time*. I did not say "I used it only during the early days and never again". Plus my team. Honestly - and it's…

> You are obviously in the early stages of using it

I am not. You do not have any knowledge about what I've done or for how long. The arrogance is truly breathtaking. You should work on it.

I've also used GH Copilot since early days, ChatGPT since launch. I did not start using agentic systems (mostly Cursor) until about a year ago, and found them to be of little help in generating code in our large, long-lived and sprawling code base. Something fundamentally changed with Opus 4.5 but I didn't notice it for quite awhile because I had already constrained my usage patterns to what I thought I knew to be their limits.

> little, relatively simple tasks in your job which otherwise would have been overburdening for you

I have done that, and many other things. You do not know anything at all about what I have done with AI. You are projecting your ignorance in a way that makes sense to you, but it is still nothing but ignorance.

If you are actually interested in my recent observations I posted this in another thread recently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47897218

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

#890

Post by mancerayder »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #814
wisty wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 layof…

I am seeing this first hand. A light year for layoffs (below 5 percent), a couple of months after a universally unpopular end of year comp, where exceeding expectations meant you get a raise right around inflation (3 ish percent).

Good people are leaving, people who can't, don't. It's hard not too see how it dilutes talent.

One of the consequences of having bean counters run tech companies.

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