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What I find interesting so far about these hiring freezes & layoffs is that at the moment it's been quite diffuse. All the announcements have been about how the

What I find interesting so far about these hiring freezes & layoffs is that at the moment it's been quite diffuse. All the announcements have been about how the companies will shrink head count and costs etc. But so far there haven't really been the focused sweeping announcements you would expect. When a company really hits hard times you expect them to be much more deliberate about how they cut, they start making decisions about which businesses do they really want to be in and how much do they want to spend. Facebook is a great example of this. You take a look at the business and say "What's the core business" it's ad-supported social media, you look at the focus and spend and it's this weird hardware platform that's a big bet and probably a long way off and not really connected to the core business. Facebook has completely lost focus on its core business. So this focus on efficiency seems just silly. A lot of these cuts seem entirely driven by some meme about the economy rather than actual real market pressure. When real headwinds start to hit, the cutting is going to be far more about focus and direction than on this vague idea of being lean. It doesn't matter how lean you are while designing a headset, because you're running a social media site.

tinyhouse 4y ago
I disagree. They didn't lose focus. Their new focus is VR. They anticipate it's going to be much bigger growth engine for them in the next decades, while the current core business is slowing down. Maybe their mistake is that they are too aggressive with the VR spending. There are many examples of companies that had a great core business that was gradually slowing down and new companies came and ate their lunch. Meta is trying to prevent that by being the leader in a completely new space. It's a bet that is going to be either a huge win or fail.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  VR isn't like digital cameras destroying film, it's a completely different business. It'd be like Netflix deciding their video streaming business has peaked so they're going to hire 10,000 new engineers to work on a new wind turbine business. I agree with you they are focused on VR, but where I disagree is that they are a social media company. They're not focused on what their company actually does. It's kind of an obvious point that maybe the reason their core business is slowing down is because the head of the company decided to stop working on it. At some point it's going to become obvious that if you spun off the Facebook part of Meta it would have a significantly larger market cap than Meta has.
  - tinyhouse 4y ago
    I don't think it's a problem that VR is a completely new business. (It has a social aspect to it but it's not relevant to the discussion). I do agree that a better model would be the Amazon one. Amazon grew a completely new business (AWS) that had nothing to do with its core business (retail) but didn't lose focus on its core business and managed to grow both at the same time.
    - _rutinerad 4y ago
      That’s a poor comparison. Amazon spun off a cost center into a separate business, so that they could make a profit on infrastructure they already had to have for their core business. So even with zero customers “AWS” would still have to exist in some form for Amazon’s core business to function. That is completely different relationship than Meta’s core business and their VR initiatives.
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      But when AWS started with s3 the stakes were small and they already had the technology. It was a natural, low stakes attempt to diversify. They didn’t bet the farm on AWS it just kinda happened organically. At least that is my assumption, I could be wrong. FB is betting the farm on a completely new technology with almost no user validation or product market fit. It’s incredibly higher risk than Amazon expanding into AWS.
      - tinyhouse 4y ago
        I agree Amazon's approach was better. But I wouldn't say that FB is getting on something completely new without product market fit. They acquired Oculus in 2014, so they have almost a decade of experience with the technology. Also their VR headsets are very popular and have high demand. The problem is that they didn't figure out a way to monetize yet and it's far from mainstream. The main use case is still video games, far from the social vision Zuck has. I have a Quest and I like it, but even for video games if I had to pick one console, the Quest wouldn't be in my top 3 choices. I hope they succeed and I think it's not fair to judge them so early.
- thrown321 4y ago
  Mark indicated that WhatsApp was next for growth/monetization and then VR, when he last appeared on CNBC's Mad Money.
DisjointedHunt 4y ago
You're partly correct. Their VR tech is not "new". Oculus was a masterstroke of an acquisition and arguably has technology that's years ahead of anyone else out there. Eye, finger tracking, touch haptics, variable focus, incredible performance optimized rendering, you name it. The tech talk given by John Carmack , that he went on stage and just winged without slides is one of the highest density talks i've heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_3SqavXjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_3SqavXjk It would have been their iPhone moment, but Zucccc bungled it with his hateful pursuit of Apples perceived slow walking of their App review. That enmity concluded with the App Tracking Transparency move, without which, we would have been still seeing record breaking ad numbers today.

tinyhouse 4y ago

I disagree. They didn't lose focus. Their new focus is VR. They anticipate it's going to be much bigger growth engine for them in the next decades, while the current core business is slowing down. Maybe their mistake is that they are too aggressive with the VR spending. There are many examples of companies that had a great core business that was gradually slowing down and new companies came and ate their lunch. Meta is trying to prevent that by being the leader in a completely new space. It's a bet that is going to be either a huge win or fail.

SilverBirch 4y ago
VR isn't like digital cameras destroying film, it's a completely different business. It'd be like Netflix deciding their video streaming business has peaked so they're going to hire 10,000 new engineers to work on a new wind turbine business. I agree with you they are focused on VR, but where I disagree is that they are a social media company. They're not focused on what their company actually does. It's kind of an obvious point that maybe the reason their core business is slowing down is because the head of the company decided to stop working on it. At some point it's going to become obvious that if you spun off the Facebook part of Meta it would have a significantly larger market cap than Meta has.
- tinyhouse 4y ago
  I don't think it's a problem that VR is a completely new business. (It has a social aspect to it but it's not relevant to the discussion). I do agree that a better model would be the Amazon one. Amazon grew a completely new business (AWS) that had nothing to do with its core business (retail) but didn't lose focus on its core business and managed to grow both at the same time.
  - _rutinerad 4y ago
    That’s a poor comparison. Amazon spun off a cost center into a separate business, so that they could make a profit on infrastructure they already had to have for their core business. So even with zero customers “AWS” would still have to exist in some form for Amazon’s core business to function. That is completely different relationship than Meta’s core business and their VR initiatives.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    But when AWS started with s3 the stakes were small and they already had the technology. It was a natural, low stakes attempt to diversify. They didn’t bet the farm on AWS it just kinda happened organically. At least that is my assumption, I could be wrong. FB is betting the farm on a completely new technology with almost no user validation or product market fit. It’s incredibly higher risk than Amazon expanding into AWS.
    - tinyhouse 4y ago
      I agree Amazon's approach was better. But I wouldn't say that FB is getting on something completely new without product market fit. They acquired Oculus in 2014, so they have almost a decade of experience with the technology. Also their VR headsets are very popular and have high demand. The problem is that they didn't figure out a way to monetize yet and it's far from mainstream. The main use case is still video games, far from the social vision Zuck has. I have a Quest and I like it, but even for video games if I had to pick one console, the Quest wouldn't be in my top 3 choices. I hope they succeed and I think it's not fair to judge them so early.
thrown321 4y ago
Mark indicated that WhatsApp was next for growth/monetization and then VR, when he last appeared on CNBC's Mad Money.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

You're partly correct. Their VR tech is not "new". Oculus was a masterstroke of an acquisition and arguably has technology that's years ahead of anyone else out there. Eye, finger tracking, touch haptics, variable focus, incredible performance optimized rendering, you name it. The tech talk given by John Carmack , that he went on stage and just winged without slides is one of the highest density talks i've heard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_3SqavXjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_3SqavXjk It would have been their iPhone moment, but Zucccc bungled it with his hateful pursuit of Apples perceived slow walking of their App review. That enmity concluded with the App Tracking Transparency move, without which, we would have been still seeing record breaking ad numbers today.