4 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg upping performance goals to get rid of employees

tomcam 4y ago
Not a fan of the guy at all, but if this report is correct it’s just good management, not news. Of course you prefer to eject the worst people when trimming the fat. And there’s a lot of fat there. One thing that has interested me is that my friends are half Chinese nationals who just quietly plod along with no interest in their FAANG jobs, and half highly motivated Westerners who love to talk shop. During the last 2 big meltdowns in 2000 and 2008 no one in either group was affected.
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  If your organisation is full of average performers, shouldn’t that be a problem at any time and not just in a recession? If people aren’t working with a sense of urgency as BAU that a management failure? The market and the economy changed, rather than the people, so to turn on your people and try to encourage them out the door is cynical.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    My heart is with everything you said. But they did not forecast well at all (even though you and I saw this coming years ago), so they’re just kind of stuck in this position. Not claiming here that I admire Zuckerberg. Not even close. I was just addressing a very specific and unfortunate circumstance.
  - salawat 4y ago
    >If people aren’t working with a sense of urgency as BAU that a management failure? If you're doing successfully as a business, you don't need hair on fire urgency all the time. The fact management theory seems to encourage wringing every last drop out of people by setting up a Welchian press is more a consequence of one particular generation's psychotic approach to worker relations. Furthermore, on average, your business should be successful with majorly average performers. No business should be a hot house flower that requires the creme-de-la-creme just to get by. Self-sustaining businesses with strong product market fit practically run themselves. The normalization of crunch and "grinding" of labor of the past few decades has been one of the most pathological social dynamics I've been alive to see.
pcurve 4y ago
I wonder if he's referring to the ones who've been hired in recent year.
flakiness 4y ago
Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941777
benjaminwootton 4y ago
Isn’t it better to just level with people and pay them off properly if they now have too much headcount? It reminds me of someone who wants to split up with a partner but hasn’t got the cojones to do it. Instead, they just start behaving terribly in the hope that they get dumped first. It’s messy, disrespectful, takes longer than just being up front, and ends up at the same point anyway.
- metadat 4y ago
  Yes, except Facebook is greedy and prefers to instead keep the money and unethically gaslight and abuse employees.
mathgladiator 4y ago
I'm glad I left last year on my terms. A key problem with meta is their inability to open new business lines to grow leaders and diverse revenue lines. Having more businesses is the only antidote for prices's law. I'm contrasting to Amazon which values leadership and has more businesses than one can even imagine. If the financial markets collapse entirely, then my retirement will end and I'd rather have to fall back to Amazon.
raverbashing 4y ago
I wonder how many of these came on the "Metaverse" hiring spree (and if that crashed and burned internally already).
- twelve40 4y ago
  Same here, and I wonder if anyone close to that guy ever had any balls to tell him how idiotic the whole "Metaverse" thing looked and how stupid it was to bet the whole farm on it. It's like "Google Plus" reincarnated, except yes, the whole company's future was pinned to this one.
goalieca 4y ago
Meanwhile I’ve had a dozen Facebook recruiter reach out and desperate to hire. Let’s see if that finally changes.

Not a fan of the guy at all, but if this report is correct it’s just good management, not news. Of course you prefer to eject the worst people when trimming the fat. And there’s a lot of fat there. One thing that has interested me is that my friends are half Chinese nationals who just quietly plod along with no interest in their FAANG jobs, and half highly motivated Westerners who love to talk shop. During the last 2 big meltdowns in 2000 and 2008 no one in either group was affected.

benjaminwootton 4y ago
If your organisation is full of average performers, shouldn’t that be a problem at any time and not just in a recession? If people aren’t working with a sense of urgency as BAU that a management failure? The market and the economy changed, rather than the people, so to turn on your people and try to encourage them out the door is cynical.
- tomcam 4y ago
  My heart is with everything you said. But they did not forecast well at all (even though you and I saw this coming years ago), so they’re just kind of stuck in this position. Not claiming here that I admire Zuckerberg. Not even close. I was just addressing a very specific and unfortunate circumstance.
- salawat 4y ago
  >If people aren’t working with a sense of urgency as BAU that a management failure? If you're doing successfully as a business, you don't need hair on fire urgency all the time. The fact management theory seems to encourage wringing every last drop out of people by setting up a Welchian press is more a consequence of one particular generation's psychotic approach to worker relations. Furthermore, on average, your business should be successful with majorly average performers. No business should be a hot house flower that requires the creme-de-la-creme just to get by. Self-sustaining businesses with strong product market fit practically run themselves. The normalization of crunch and "grinding" of labor of the past few decades has been one of the most pathological social dynamics I've been alive to see.

pcurve 4y ago

I wonder if he's referring to the ones who've been hired in recent year.

flakiness 4y ago

Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941777

benjaminwootton 4y ago

Isn’t it better to just level with people and pay them off properly if they now have too much headcount? It reminds me of someone who wants to split up with a partner but hasn’t got the cojones to do it. Instead, they just start behaving terribly in the hope that they get dumped first. It’s messy, disrespectful, takes longer than just being up front, and ends up at the same point anyway.

metadat 4y ago
Yes, except Facebook is greedy and prefers to instead keep the money and unethically gaslight and abuse employees.

mathgladiator 4y ago

I'm glad I left last year on my terms. A key problem with meta is their inability to open new business lines to grow leaders and diverse revenue lines. Having more businesses is the only antidote for prices's law. I'm contrasting to Amazon which values leadership and has more businesses than one can even imagine. If the financial markets collapse entirely, then my retirement will end and I'd rather have to fall back to Amazon.

raverbashing 4y ago

I wonder how many of these came on the "Metaverse" hiring spree (and if that crashed and burned internally already).

twelve40 4y ago
Same here, and I wonder if anyone close to that guy ever had any balls to tell him how idiotic the whole "Metaverse" thing looked and how stupid it was to bet the whole farm on it. It's like "Google Plus" reincarnated, except yes, the whole company's future was pinned to this one.

goalieca 4y ago

Meanwhile I’ve had a dozen Facebook recruiter reach out and desperate to hire. Let’s see if that finally changes.