4 ms·

I'm shocked people are taking "Meta" at face value. To me it's a way to signal to outsiders that Facebook is still cool and hip. That's it. Now when recruitin

I'm shocked people are taking "Meta" at face value. To me it's a way to signal to outsiders that Facebook is still cool and hip. That's it. Now when recruiting they can play the Meta-not-Facebook angle. Now if they can pad earnings calls with the amazing success the metaverse is seeing (so what if it's losing us money, that's the future!) - It's like an inverse Alphabet. Where Alphabet silently serves as an umbrella for moonshots, Meta is a moonshot that's an umbrella for boring old Facebook

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cm2012 5y ago
They are spending insanely on r and d on this compared to companies their size. 10b a year.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Their market cap has risen over 70B since the announcement, so I think they'll be ok (Yes I know market cap != war chest, but expenditure on Meta is nothing compared to the "soft power" it provides FB)
- manquer 5y ago
  honestly I am not sure how actually are they spending that kind of money. I dont see a ton of fb recruiters hiring for VR skills, I dont see a lot of training/certifications /open source libraries /platform Sdks for other devs etc that feels like $10B a year kind of budgets are behind VR/AR. That's a lot of money, Hard space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin which have big hardware expenses spend only 1-2 billon/year and have thousands or tens of thousands of staff working and their progress is visible . Does FB have 20,000 + engineers working on metaverse? even if so, doing what exactly ?
  - crakhamster01 5y ago
    > Does FB have 20,000 + engineers working on metaverse? At least 10k as of March https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22326875/facebook-reality-labs-ar-vr-headcount-report https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22326875/facebook-reality...
  - retrocryptid 5y ago
    you're looking in the wrong place. i have reality labs recruiters calling me frequently and my linked in feed is a never ending cascade of sponsored posts about how working ar FB^H^HMMVRS is so much fun.
    - manquer 5y ago
      > FB^H^HMMVRS No sure what this meant I am sure FB is recruiting, my point is not that reality labs is fake , I am sure it is real and they do recruit, it just that I don't see recruitment that would signal that large a number of investment. I wasn't saying from a personal engineer anecdotal experience, but as some one working in recruitment tech, I keep an eye on industry patterns. I could be wrong in my impression but I think they are just doing bit of creative accounting on existing expenses to show high spends on their flagship project.
nowherebeen 5y ago
> Meta-not-Facebook I am going to start using this term to satisfy people that argue its not called Facebook anymore.
- brundolf 5y ago
  "The artist formerly known as Facebook"
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    s/artist/criminals/
- jackTheMan 5y ago
  Meta-pk-Facebook = Meta-previously-known-Facebook would be better, because in case of the Meta-not-Facebook, 'not' might be strong enough to remember that way.
aerosmile 5y ago
Nailed it.

deleted 5y ago

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cm2012 5y ago

They are spending insanely on r and d on this compared to companies their size. 10b a year.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Their market cap has risen over 70B since the announcement, so I think they'll be ok (Yes I know market cap != war chest, but expenditure on Meta is nothing compared to the "soft power" it provides FB)
manquer 5y ago
honestly I am not sure how actually are they spending that kind of money. I dont see a ton of fb recruiters hiring for VR skills, I dont see a lot of training/certifications /open source libraries /platform Sdks for other devs etc that feels like $10B a year kind of budgets are behind VR/AR. That's a lot of money, Hard space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin which have big hardware expenses spend only 1-2 billon/year and have thousands or tens of thousands of staff working and their progress is visible . Does FB have 20,000 + engineers working on metaverse? even if so, doing what exactly ?
- crakhamster01 5y ago
  > Does FB have 20,000 + engineers working on metaverse? At least 10k as of March https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22326875/facebook-reality-labs-ar-vr-headcount-report https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22326875/facebook-reality...
- retrocryptid 5y ago
  you're looking in the wrong place. i have reality labs recruiters calling me frequently and my linked in feed is a never ending cascade of sponsored posts about how working ar FB^H^HMMVRS is so much fun.
  - manquer 5y ago
    > FB^H^HMMVRS No sure what this meant I am sure FB is recruiting, my point is not that reality labs is fake , I am sure it is real and they do recruit, it just that I don't see recruitment that would signal that large a number of investment. I wasn't saying from a personal engineer anecdotal experience, but as some one working in recruitment tech, I keep an eye on industry patterns. I could be wrong in my impression but I think they are just doing bit of creative accounting on existing expenses to show high spends on their flagship project.

nowherebeen 5y ago

> Meta-not-Facebook I am going to start using this term to satisfy people that argue its not called Facebook anymore.

brundolf 5y ago
"The artist formerly known as Facebook"
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  s/artist/criminals/
jackTheMan 5y ago
Meta-pk-Facebook = Meta-previously-known-Facebook would be better, because in case of the Meta-not-Facebook, 'not' might be strong enough to remember that way.

aerosmile 5y ago

Nailed it.