67 ms·

Meta lays off 11,000 people

• gtsnexp 4y ago
  Where are tech jobs heading in the United States and globally? Who (or what industry) is absorbing all these folks? I think the current landscape merits one of these prediction style threads on HN.
  • Zanneth 4y ago
    Still mostly staying in Silicon Valley. Plenty of companies are still hiring. Laid off Meta employees with good skills will not have problems finding another job in the same area.
• SCAQTony 4y ago
  Perhaps a strong, independent board of directors could have mitigated this fiasco. The meta-verse never looked like a good idea especially after previous failures like "Second Life." YMMV https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-was-always-terrible/620546/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/faceb...
  • daniel_iversen 4y ago
    You can't really predict the future like that.. there were lots of mp3 players, tablets, smart phones, smart watches etc. before the ones that "hit it off" and made a lot of money. I'd think the theory is Meta has the money to invest for the long term as the market is building and become a leader.
    • ummonk 4y ago
      Walkmans were big hits 50 years ago. Blackberry phones 20 years ago. I wouldn't exactly say music players and smart phones had a track record of failures.
• ummonk 4y ago
  We’re probably going to see a decline in market comp / offer competitiveness as the flood of big tech layoffs hits the job market and startups feed on the offerings from big companies.
• dcow 4y ago
  This is the best toned layoff announcement I’ve read.
• steve76 4y ago
• bionsystem 4y ago
  > Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. That's... Wrong ? Who predicted that the growth would continue ? To me and from a lot of reading I did, it was obvious by the end of 2020 that a lot of those tech companies took several years of growth in advance, not that it would continue...
• lljk_kennedy 4y ago
  Honest question - what does 'take accountability' and 'take responsibility' actually look like for Zuckerberg here?
  • theCrowing 4y ago
    It means nothing especially with 50% voting shares. The funny thing about these layoffs is how they just go by the C-Suites without even denting their value.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Honest question - what do you expect it to look like beside making the statement and giving employees a more than gracious severance package to back up the words?
    • lljk_kennedy 4y ago
      I guess in an ideal world, the board removes him as CEO?
      • atemerev 4y ago
        Why? He is making a correct decision from the business point of view, it is unclear who will be the replacement CEO, and there are similar layoffs across other tech companies. The board has zero incentive of changing the CEO now.
        • pmontra 4y ago
          This decision might be correct but the previous one was wrong. In his own words: "I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected." So, keep him to downsize the company and replace him when it's time to start growing again?
        • lljk_kennedy 4y ago
          It's evidently clear now, his "correct decision from a business point of view" to increase investments during Covid was wrong as they resulted in these 11,000 people being let go. I think the same could be said for the increased investment in metaverse, which I imagine is predicated on the prior large growth of people moving online during Covid, which is now returning to the mean. I think their share price has taken strong corrections due to these decisions. I think that's an incentive for a board to take action? (I'm purposefully ignoring the ouroborus that is Zuck's control of voting shares that protects him here.)
• nabaraz 4y ago
  > Severance: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap. ̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶.̶ ̶I̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶5̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶2̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶a̶y̶.̶ I was wrong here. I read it as 16 weeks per each year of service.
  • rfoo 4y ago
    Wait, how is 26 weeks 2 years?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • bujak300 4y ago
    I think it would be 5 years times 2 extra weeks - 10 extra weeks on top of the 16 weeks severance
  • maest 4y ago
    You may have misread "weeks" as "months".
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • refrigerator 4y ago
    5 years => 26 weeks = 0.5 years of pay, right?
  • FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Possibly dumb question, but how did you get to two years?
  • Brigand 4y ago
    Why is 26 weeks two years of pay?
  • steve_gh 4y ago
    16 + (2 * 5) = 26 In my book that is 6 month's pay
• technics256 4y ago
  Severance summary: Severance. We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap. PTO. We’ll pay for all remaining PTO time. RSU vesting. Everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting. Health insurance. We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months. Career services. We’ll provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads. Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need.
  • whoooooo123 4y ago
    4 month's paid holiday? This is the kind of severance that would make me wish I'd been laid off.
    • 10241024 4y ago
      4 months of severance + 2 extra weeks for every year of service i.e. 20 weeks (~5 months) if you've been there for the last 10 years. So ~9 months paid holiday in total. Not bad at all.
    • nvarsj 4y ago
      No RSUs though, which make up 30-50% of compensation depending on level.
      • scarface74 4y ago
        With the stock being down 70% from its all time high, the ratio has changed drastically.
    • agilob 4y ago
      Or have something similar guaranteed by EU Worker Protection. I was made redundant a few years ago and was paid 4.5 month salary on my last day.
• Tepix 4y ago
  Quite a difference between this message and the one Twitter (i.e. Elon Musk) sent to its employees.
  • kensai 4y ago
    As much as people hate Mark Zuckerberg and accuse him of being a robot, he showed much more humanity in his message in respect to Ironman Elon.
    • andrewinardeer 4y ago
      You really think he penned this? This is a PR release made by a team of people that he put his name to.
      • universenz 4y ago
        While he may not of penned it himself, he is certainly funding 50% of the rather generous severance and that should count for something by comparison.
        • nowherebeen 4y ago
          If you are thinking this is him and not the corporate strategy team, then you are a mistaken.
          • darkwater 4y ago
            The corporate strategy team leads the implementation, but the final go/nogo is on the CEO for sure. Or at least, that I would expect.
            • nowherebeen 4y ago
              The CEO is told they need to layoff by the CFO. The CEO agrees, then the corporate strategy team devise a strategy with the PR team. After the strategy is devised, the severance and headcount numbers are sent to the CFO for approval. The CFO should be the final go/nogo. Off course, the CEO can come in and change his mind, but that wouldn't be wise since the CFO has the best understanding of the economic situation and company's financial health.
• 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  Considering the greatly inflated tech wages in top companies, aren't those layoffs alone likely to impact the US economy?
  • maccard 4y ago
    FTA: > While we’re making reductions in every organization across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, some teams will be affected more than others. Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially. It's not all engineers let go.
    • dopamean 4y ago
      Are engineers the only people in tech with high salaries?
      • PubliusMI 4y ago
  • curiousllama 4y ago
    Volume scale is too different. US workers might churn at .5%/month - that’s maybe 500k job losses. Even if Facebook pays 10x average, that’d be equivalent $ to ~3 days of normal churn.
  • habinero 4y ago
    No. The US GDP is 23 trillion USD.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    Yes. Hopefully starting with housing prices & rents in certain areas. Though the US is ~3.3e8 people. Don't expect layoffs of ~1.1e4 to have a substantial national effect. [Edit - 's/1e3/1e4/' correction.]
• maccard 4y ago
  > I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go _How_ does Meta have 85,000 employees? That's an _incredible_ size of an organisation.
  • synicalx 4y ago
    That seems like a crazy number. I work at a company with not a heap more than that and we have just as many if not more software products + HEAPS of wildly different hardware + RnD for all kinds of things + retail and ecomm.
  • vegai_ 4y ago
    Yeah, I was just thinking few days ago how absurdly large Twitter's workforce seemed to be.
    • habinero 4y ago
      People fixate on what looks like a simple frontend and don't see all the tech behind it, plus the even larger support structure behind it: sales, analytics, moderation, etc etc.
    • FartyMcFarter 4y ago
      Obligatory link: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
      • blagie 4y ago
        I disagree with this link. Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff. You know the problem with that statement? No one will give me 10 motivated people, 5 years, and room to focus. First, any ten people you find will care about having fun, making money, preparing for their next career step. Beyond a pizza box team, finding people motivated by a common good is impossible. Second, if you give me room to focus, you won't know that I'm not playing video games all day. You don't want that. You'll want to monitor what I'm doing. My ability to keep collecting my paycheck will be based on keeping you happy (perhaps with false reports of progress, if you don't set things up right). And so on. Once you factor in the human constraints, I have no idea how to beat Google. If I did, I'd have a second unicorn on my belt. I'll mention: I've had that magical scenario -- money and room to focus -- exactly once in my career. I did built a unicorn in a few months. Once those dynamics kicked in, there was near-zero further progress, but the organization eventually sold for around $1B (and that was after losing a lot of further value). That was based on me having a few months with a 100% carve-out to focus completely, as well as to spend money as I saw fit. As organizations get bigger, these problems get harder. Right now, in a typical day, in my current job, I can code for at most 3 hours. Just as often, this is zero hours. I couldn't build the same unicorn with that level of split focus in any amount of time. I'm amazed at the difference in how much I get done. The technical problems to beating Google aren't impossible to solve, but the hard problems aren't technical.
• nokeya 4y ago
  So, after Twitter and Meta layoffs there will be around 15,000 people looking for the job. In one moment. With other layoffs it can be counted over 20,000 people IMHO. Will this over flood the market and bring expectations and salaries down?
  • kilolima 4y ago
    Yes, because they will be replaced with offshore labor or visa workers.
  • robertlagrant 4y ago
    Depends on the balance of what sort of roles are laid off.
  • whatwherewhy 4y ago
    In the small central EU country where I live, that wouldn't even saturate the open programmer positions - just about 1/10 of it. I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in any measurable way. If anything this just means these people will be working on more different products, and that means more opportunities for even more programmers in the future.
    • weatherlite 4y ago
      You're right but its not as if only Meta are firing or we're anywhere close to this recession ending. There's gonna be a bunch of pain to come still unfortunately.
    • dagw 4y ago
      While it might not saturate the US job market as a whole, it will saturate the parts of the local programmer market that can come even close to matching the sorts of salaries these people where probably paid. If they're willing to move to anywhere in the US and/or take a 50+% pay cut then they'll have no problem getting a job. If they all want to stay where they are and get paid within 20% of their current salary then lots of people will end up without a job.
• andreysolsty 4y ago
  Im really curious how severance in non-US jurisdictions works in these cases. Both stripe and Facebook are offering WAY more than required by UK law for example. Do they offer similar packages to any UK staff laid off? Or do they assume that with a better social safety net they can get away with just following their legal requirements?
  • Eisenstein 4y ago
    > do they assume that with a better social safety net they can get away with just following their legal requirements? If they are offering above and beyond severance for the US, why would they be looking to 'get away' with anything like that? They could 'get away' with offering the US workers the minimum possible package yet they didn't. Maybe they don't want to burn bridges, or maybe they want the good (or non-bad) PR, or maybe the management are decent humans, but they are doing it for some reason and there is no indication to think that the reason wouldn't also apply in other national jurisdictions.
• pmontra 4y ago
  > At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. This is very similar to the Stripe layoff memo at https://stripe.com/en-it/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email-to-stripe-employees https://stripe.com/en-it/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons... The structure of the two documents is very similar too. Is that a standard pattern of did Meta took Stripe's memo and adapted it to suit their needs?
  • thomasmarcelis 4y ago
    Probably same PR company or law firm
  • vanilla-almond 4y ago
    Shopify announced staff layoffs in July 2022. The Shopify CEO expressed the same sentiment repeated later by Stripe and Facebook: "...given what we saw, we placed another bet: We bet that the channel mix - the share of dollars that travel through ecommerce rather than physical retail - would permanently leap ahead by 5 or even 10 years." "It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off. What we see now is the mix reverting to roughly where pre-Covid data would have suggested it should be at this point." https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team
    • mabbo 4y ago
      Yeah seriously, I read the meta announcement and thought "Did you just steal Tobi's letter and do some find/replace on it?"
      • andromeduck 4y ago
        Something tells me there might be a confounding factor here...
  • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• nixcraft 4y ago
  All social media companies hire too many folks and now cutting expenses to meet their target for shareholders. Yet, only Twitter seems to get lots of backslashes compared to other FANGS. Why? I wonder if this relates to Elon Musks' ongoing outbursts on Twitter regarding his political and other conservative views. I believe I answered my own questions. Ha!
  • habinero 4y ago
    I don't think you understand how many people it takes to run a large company. Turns out Elon doesn't either lol. Also, he's not a conservative.
    • nikau 4y ago
      > Also, he's not a conservative Yeah he's a regular old leftie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_and_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_and_unions
  • Bilal_io 4y ago
    I don't think you're looking at this objectively. The way Musk handled the layoffs was reckless and without much thought other than "reduce cost immediately", the proof is they backtracked and tried to hire people back after realizing what a poopy mess they've created. That alone is ridiculous and warrants the backlash Musk/Twitter received. From the looks of it, Zuckerberg handled this better than what anyone was expecting. Talk about under promising and over delivering
    • nikau 4y ago
      Musks was the "press conference outside 4 seasons landscaping" equivalent
  • wooger 4y ago
    You think twitter is in FAANG?
• rvz 4y ago
  Good. About time. $180K per employee for years is not sustainable. This is the general 'Tech Crash' I was talking about before all of this happened in advance. [0] [1] We'll see what happens after the news. No company is safe. Not even FAAMNG companies that HN has been screaming about for years was ever untouchable. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238
  • habinero 4y ago
    Okay, but it's not eng being hit, it looks like. He mentions recruiting and biz depts.
  • hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    Congratulations on your prediction?
  • tiagod 4y ago
    Where's your source for $180K/year average for these 11k employees?
  • FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Since you insist on tooting your own horn, I think you should put a timeline on your predictions, as well as specifics on how this "crash" differs from periodic layoffs that happen every decade or even more often than that. Anyone can predict that things will be bad at some point in the future.
  • ddorian43 4y ago
    > $180K per employee for years is not sustainable. > - House prices will skyrocket Who will pay these house prices?
  • iamstupidsimple 4y ago
    Crab bucket mentality. Those salaries are fine, what went wrong is Meta overhired. FAANG companies don't have enough work to go around as it is.
• CarbonCycles 4y ago
  I agree. Two very different business responses between Musk and Zuck. I almost feel sorry for Zuck as we are witnessing meltdowns of two large companies in real-time. Musk just continues to dig his own grave… I feel bad for the ppl losing their jobs but that is a very generous severance package.
  • lvl102 4y ago
    Zuck did it himself too. No one told him to go all-in on VR. No one. All he had to do was tackle payment and maybe cloud. He first went for crypto and then is in the process of failing with VR. Meta really needs to be in the cloud business.
    • andromeduck 4y ago
      They should have never given up on mobile. Burning a few billion a year on an android fork would have had much better returns than trying to go warp speed on VR.
    • pavlov 4y ago
      FB briefly was in the cloud PaaS business when they acquired Parse. The problem is that the way Meta runs its data centers and software stack is tightly integrated with the products. It’s not really amenable to running third party applications or storing third party data.
      • oblio 4y ago
        Nobody's infra business is really neatly separated. If the will is there, it can be done.
      • lordnacho 4y ago
        So, loosen the connection? Isn't that what thousands of engineers are for? Didn't Amazon do this originally? I'm not sure cloud is actually such a great thing for FB but if you're going to do it, that's an inevitable step, isn't it?
      • 4y ago
• sidcool 4y ago
  As much as I dislike Meta's practices, this was well handled. Decent severance and support.
  • tumetab1 4y ago
    Allowing access to email until the end of day also seems an improvement over other US companies practices > We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive information. But we’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell.
    • brailsafe 4y ago
      This is why you need real friends outside your workplace. When you get shoved out the door, at most your get the afternoon to be like "lets keep in touch!"
    • fleddr 4y ago
      It's honestly pretty risky. I imagine quite a lot of confidential information is in email.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Local caches etc make that risk already extant.
      • optymizer 4y ago
        There's some discussion and code in email, but most of it is on Workplace. We don't use email much. I have 32500 unread emails.
        • YeBanKo 4y ago
          They may archive old emails and allow only new email be sent/read.
        • phonebucket 4y ago
• andreiursan 4y ago
  IMO the Zuck just gave Elon a lesson on how to be a grownup CEO.
  • amelius 4y ago
    Elon is a fake person created by VCs to fulfill their goals.
    • aliswe 4y ago
      Troll post of the year!
    • serf 4y ago
      and Zuckerberg is somehow real and authentic? First time i've ever heard that one. Realistically this cut was probably done in time to offer a decent severance without hurting things on the corporate side -- to compare this to Twitter's post-Elon crash-plan is disingenuous, and i'm not even a Musk fan.
    • oxplot 4y ago
      > Elon is a fake person created by VCs to fulfill their goals. I'm gonna give you a bucket full of benefit of doubt and assume you mean nothing negative by this. I'm all for fake people fulfilling VCs goals if that means we can have better and more exciting future (which Musk has delivered to date). It's worth mentioning that many other "real" people with "no" hidden agendas have done ... jack shit over the past 20 years. :)
      • quest88 4y ago
        What did he deliver?
        • oxplot 4y ago
          Assuming you’re sincerely asking this to learn, I suggest you ask Google, and read some Wikipedia to boot.
• daniaal 4y ago
  Google did the same sort of crazy hiring and i wonder if they will be next to layoff thousands
  • ptman 4y ago
    I read (an estimate?) somewhere that google has been doing this by not renewing contractors and cutting hiring
    • saiya-jin 4y ago
      That's a version of this which doesn't stress out employees so the best ones don't jump the ship at first occasion. Our org went through something similar some 6 year ago, and it was a stark contrast with previous frequent firing rounds when nobody would be secure, sometimes even best within given team were let go (ie due to current allocation issues). But this can replace small firing ie up to 10%, not when you are doing stuff musk-style.
    • bart_spoon 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure that's what Meta was doing 3-6 months ago, so it may still be coming.
  • pm90 4y ago
    Google's ad network is pretty ubiquitous since it spans almost all the known web. Facebook is pretty big too but relies mostly on its own platform (FB, Inst etc.). For sure Google is affected, but I imagine the impact is less. Also one thing that shouldn't be missed: Google controls Android, the most popular mobile OS in the world (except US maybe) so it wasn't affected as strongly by Apple's clampdown. The lesson to Zuck is clear: he absolutely needs to own the next digital platform, and in his mind its the metaverse so he's going all in. I question the decisions he makes but the reasoning seems pretty solid at least (unlike a certain Electric Car maker)
• meta_gone 4y ago
  Got cannned today. At least the severance is good
  • lambda_dn 4y ago
    Is it immediate or you still working notice?
  • fumblebee 4y ago
    What did the process look like? Did you find out first from HR, from Zuck's memo, your manager, or was your laptop just remotely KO'd?
    • meta_gone 4y ago
      Email, then checked to see if I still had access. Still have workplace access weirdly.
      • valleyer 4y ago
        What did you lose access to? Source control? Other servers? Just curious.
  • polio 4y ago
    What org were you part of?
• lambda_dn 4y ago
  This is the slow demise of Facebook, if their pivot to AR/VR/Metaverse fails to catch on things will go sideways fast.
• kodisha 4y ago
  Will the remaining staff use "Mark as safe" feature? /s
  • derwiki 4y ago
    I’ve been joking that LinkedIn should build this.
• firstSpeaker 4y ago
  I am wondering when will Amazon start the layoff process or that their practices are more economical and that they wont go this direction.
  • lrvick 4y ago
    While I am no fan of Amazon, they at least produce useful services and users pay money for them. I would be surprised to see layoffs there.
  • derwiki 4y ago
    Don’t they have high natural attrition?
  • nfRfqX5n 4y ago
    With the holidays and re:invent coming, it would be pretty insane for them to cut jobs right now
• saos 4y ago
  Ohh that’s a lot. How can I view timeline of my companies headcount growth? Does LinkedIn have this info? Edit: LinkedIn premium is required for this info
• lrvick 4y ago
  While I truly feel the best outcome for humanity is Facebook/Meta shutting down, I will give due credit to the PR and HR teams for managing to make Zuck look human in this moment.
• pera 4y ago
  I wonder why the two biggest recent layoffs were by the two largest (US-based) social networks, is this the end of an era? And where is all that advertisement money going now? As a side note, it's crazy to think that Meta stocks are currently -75% from its peak last year.
  • nemo44x 4y ago
    Probably not. Some companies grew too fast and are now correcting. Nothing goes straight up or down. It will be tight for awhile though.
  • Ragnarokk 4y ago
    I think it was mostly a bubble and it finally has popped. The big social networks were funded blindly because they were growing on the market. But of course it wouldn't be eternal
  • weatherlite 4y ago
    The ios privacy change hurt Meta but honestly most financial reports I've seen from tech (Alphabet, Amazon etc) don't look great. It has to do with the macro environment we're in. Which tech stocks had a stellar year? Not that many.
• eschneider 4y ago
  I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.
  • curiousllama 4y ago
    Are you referring to rounds at the same company, or rounds across the economy?
    • eschneider 4y ago
      Rounds at the same company.
    • marcus0x62 4y ago
      Not the OP, but what I’ve experienced is severance packages get worse across rounds at a single company. A previous employer started at 1 year pay / benefits, then six months, then six weeks + two weeks per year of service.
      • cableshaft 4y ago
        Then you have corporations like the previous one I worked at, which had a terrible 1 week pay per year you've worked there, capped at 4 weeks pay. I know someone who had worked there for 17 years that got laid off and only got 4 weeks because of it. They never got around to laying me off, I ended up quitting much later than I should have.
        • marcus0x62 4y ago
          That really puts loyalty towards your employer into perspective, doesn’t it?
    • throwaway2037 4y ago
• nomilk 4y ago
  > the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected What's "ads signal loss"? Is that iPhone asking for permission to track activity across apps, causing less accurate ad placement?
  • danpalmer 4y ago
    Yes. That and other similar efforts such as phasing out third party cookies.
  • akmarinov 4y ago
    They've been milking that for almost 3 years now...
  • Barrin92 4y ago
    yes. it's the changes Apple made to app tracking. IIRC Facebook earlier this year itself stated that it would cost them up to ten billion in sales.
  • willis936 4y ago
    It could mean people left after the re-brand.
  • lovecg 4y ago
    Attribution, not placement
• thatoneguytoo 4y ago
  It felt as if I was reading the Stripe memo.
• dustedcodes 4y ago
  Did they hire 11k people during the pandemic? If not then the given reason for the layoffs are clearly not the full story.
  • justapassenger 4y ago
    They hired way more than that.
  • somedude895 4y ago
    They give two reasons: - Hiring spree during Covid - Economic slowdown, eg lower ad spends
  • habibur 4y ago
    Head count had been around 40k in 2019.
    • dustedcodes 4y ago
      Wow so they increased their head count by more than double? How do you even onboard 44.6k people in 3 years? No wonder that they weren't very productive.
      • nappy-doo 4y ago
        Pedantically, it's more than that as there's replacement too.
• krembanan 4y ago
  Does anyone know how many of these are in engineering?
• glintik 4y ago
  That’s ok, they hired too much people too fast. Ad revenues go down, they need to save money.
• pelasaco 4y ago
  Bad Musk /s
• xvector 4y ago
  Looks like the terms of the layoff are very generous. 4 months of pay, accelerated vesting, etc.
• s-a-u-s-a-g-e 4y ago
• oars 4y ago
  Is it better for Google and Amazon to try recruiting this available talent straightaway or keep waiting?
  • strikelaserclaw 4y ago
    what makes you think those orgs aren't bloated as well ?
• Hackbraten 4y ago
  I’m feeling sorry for everyone affected. Let’s hope that this isn’t going to impact Buck [0] too much. It’s one of the best things Facebook has ever made. [0]: https://github.com/facebook/buck/tree/dev https://github.com/facebook/buck/tree/dev
• alberth 4y ago
  I'm surprised they announced this on a prime news day, as oppose to Friday afternoon where less attention might have been given to it. (My heart goes out to all who lost their job. I'm wishing everyone well during these tough times.)
  • tech_tuna 4y ago
    The news is consumed with the US midterms, it's actually a great time to make this announcement.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      And it’s perfectly timed because now no ex employees can change their vote “out of anger”.
      • alberth 4y ago
        > no ex employees can change their vote Change their vote from what to what? Just curious. As an aside, it result appear largely unchanged on seats. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=midterm%20results https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=midterm%20results
        • bombcar 4y ago
          It's possible that some percentage of people would change their vote in retaliation to being fired just before an election, and probably from "status quo" to "burn it all down with fire". Even if it statistically would have no effect, it avoids being blamed for it.
          • itsyaboi 4y ago
            I'm still having trouble following your train of thought. I work at Meta and vote for red team, after being laid off I vote for blue team because... that'll show 'em?
• agumonkey 4y ago
  They should join fresh ex-twitter employees and incorporate.
• revskill 4y ago
  HR is annoying in most of cases. Their job should be (and could be) automated via bots. My thought is, the reason is most of them lack of logical thinking skills, that's why they're HR in first place ?
  • esalman 4y ago
    Do bots have better thinking skills than humans?
• patkai 4y ago
  Where would you advertise for ex-Meta or ex-Twitter developers?
  • postexitus 4y ago
    teamblind.com
  • optymizer 4y ago
    lots of us read HN, so maybe in one of the usual hiring threads here
• andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > 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-billionaire before and he still is now. Is that it?
  • varsketiz 4y ago
    He is paying a pretty decent severance package for the US as far as I understand.
  • noname2021 4y ago
    Taking responsibility might mean ponying up to give all the affected people additional months of pay / benefits etc. After all he is responsible for a big time disruption to their families That would be a meaningful way of saying he is sorry as well as setting a precedent for all other billionaires who just "take responsibility" and continue on
  • iepathos 4y ago
    In practice, the change is they're laying people off and paying them generous severance packages and some other support options to help them transition as well as looking to cut infrastructure expenses. I'm not sure what other change you would be expecting. As a major share holder he is significantly impacted, losing over $100 billion since 2021. He's far from the only tech CEO to invest in fast expansion during the initial covid boom. It can very much be argued he made general good decisions to fast expand then and retract now given the information they had at the time, though I think his investments specifically in VR have been terrible for the company as a whole. Only time will tell if that will ever pay off for them or continue to be a money sink hole.
  • faangiq 4y ago
    Like the soul of America, it’s nothing but empty corporate speak.
  • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Eumenes 4y ago
  Meta/FB is an immoral company, so I have almost zero sympathy if you agreed to work there in the first place.
• nickdothutton 4y ago
  “I want to take responsibility” vs “I take responsibility”.
• darkwater 4y ago
  I'd like to highlight this quote from the statement: > and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected Apple decisions + EU regulations?
  • yreg 4y ago
    I have a stupid question. Perhaps someone can explain. What is the link between Apple introducing new rules to nerf tracking and Meta making less money? I guess less tracking means less relevant ads. Are Meta's customers able to somehow evaluate this and are they now unwilling to spend as much money on advertising with them? Or is it that Meta now has lower click-through rates on iOS? Is there something else?
    • srcreigh 4y ago
      Imagine FB can report that its ads are driving 60% of sales at a lower ROI than other channels. That’s a great incentive for companies to spend more on FB. Due to the iOS privacy consent form, FB can’t provide these kinds of reports anymore. There hasn’t been a decent replacement which drives companies to spend money with Facebook. That’s why revenues are down. This is also why VR is such an important investment. If Meta will own the VR platform, other companies such as Google and Apple wont be able to block Meta’s attribution.
    • Qub3d 4y ago
      The link is that Ad Tracking Transparency (ATT) happened relatively close to FB's numbers going south, and its a great scapegoat. https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/ft_effects_of_app_tracking_transparency https://daringfireball.net/2022/08/ft_effects_of_app_trackin... > What I think makes ATT a tempting scapegoat is that it creates a great story. Apple enacted a change in the name of privacy and that change has adversely affected both Facebook and small businesses that relied on Facebook. That’s a dramatic, captivating storyline, with two rivals, both corporate behemoths, on opposing sides. (The footnote on this blog is a great explanation as to why FB's adTech was considered so bananas and why its no longer as much.)
    • KaiserPro 4y ago
• jacooper 4y ago
  I'm still surprised they are using the fb.com domain. Why haven't they move to meta.com?
  • jacooper 4y ago
    Moved*
• yashg 4y ago
  16 weeks of base pay + 6 months of health insurance and everything else, looks like a decent severance package at least. This seems better handled than Twitter's layoffs.
  • kadomony 4y ago
    Musk only authorized 3 months' severance to substantiate the 90 days needed to prevent being sued into oblivion. The man is going to do the bare minimum for his employees to recoup his loss in making the acquisition.
    • FraaJad 4y ago
      The bare minimum would be 60 days severance to stave off California's WARN act, isn't it?
      • kadomony 4y ago
        No, I believe that it's 90. At least, that's what the class action lawsuit argued.
  • nsenifty 4y ago
    +2 weeks base pay for every year of service with no cap.
    • blsapologist42 4y ago
      Yup. One person I know is getting around 10 months of severance(!). Actually seems like a sweet deal.
  • consumer451 4y ago
    That is really generous. But man, I'm sitting here really hoping my sibling who works at Meta is not getting axed. He took the job because of the money, after our parents had to declare a medical bankruptcy. The increase in salary allowed him to pay for their housing which they cannot afford on SS benefits. Even under those circumstances he still would not take the job until he got my super-anti-Zuck butt on-board with the idea. I hope people realize that reasons for working at Meta may be more complicated than it might seem on the surface. </rant> UPDATE: he still has a job, whew
• patagonia 4y ago
  Getting tired of “I take responsibility” without taking responsibility.
  • zmxz 4y ago
    Could you highlight in detail how responsibility wasn't taken in your opinion and which parts of the text we've all read highlights that?
    • patagonia 4y ago
      Nope.
      • zmxz 4y ago
        Would you say then that it's safe to assume you didn't read the text and you merely reacted to what you thought was written?
        • patagonia 4y ago
          Nope. I just don’t have the time. Would you say you are being patronizing and are making assumptions?
          • zmxz 4y ago
            I am making assumptions, but whether I'm patronizing is just mental gymnastics from your side. You posted an opinion that you don't want to justify. There's really no other action to take except what I wrote.
            • patagonia 4y ago
              About 4m people took another action. As in no action. Your logic just isn’t adding up. But, great talk. Thanks.
• ericd 4y ago
  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.
  • madengr 4y ago
  • optymizer 4y ago
    The one thing I want is the ability to work on my own startup in my spare time, without fearing legal repercussions. It wouldn't require me to risk my house on an idea.
  • randomsearch 4y ago
    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
    • swalsh 4y ago
      Getting laid off during a tech crash often leads to smart people deciding to finally follow the dreams they couldn't justify during the tech bull market. There's probably no shortage of people working at Facebook who have dreams of quitting to build some idea they have. But quitting a job paying 350k or whatever is just not in the cards.
    • seydor 4y ago
      facebook making a lot of money doesnt imply that they are making something great > if they were going to do something awesome they probably wouldn't have been working there. For the past 10+ years, in this forum, the advice is to stop trying to build something, go work at Faang
      • voisin 4y ago
        > For the past 10+ years, in this forum, the advice is to stop trying to build something, go work at Faang I think the advice given, when requested, has much more nuance that takes into account the context provided in the request. Do you honestly think HN is just a bunch of FAANG fanboys?
• keewee7 4y ago
  Facebook has become the local town square on the Internet. Thousands of active local groups is something that other social networks will have a hard time replicating. Marketplace is another feature that takes advantage of Facebook having a strong local presence, everywhere. Why did they pivot towards VR and metaverse when Facebook's strength is being the "Localverse"?
  • fullshark 4y ago
    Because FB missed owning the smartphone platform with their FB phone (apple + google), and so they want to own the next one in their opinion (VR-Oculus).
    • system2 4y ago
      They do own WhatsApp though.
  • brailsafe 4y ago
    I think Reddit is probably the local town square, but it depends on your bubble. Marketplace is there, Messenger, but I haven't used FB for anything else in years.
  • optymizer 4y ago
    They filled the town square, and growth is the primary metric, so they decided to announce a new and exciting area to grow in.
  • polio 4y ago
    They are indeed investing into groups, but ultimately the marginal gain there is marginal. The metaverse stuff also complements (i.e. it isn't a complete pivoting away from traditional social networking) all of the other connectivity (e.g. imagine a unique and persistent VRChat instance per group; you can have a meta-localverse) but also gives Meta its own platform. Mark is obviously incredibly pissed at the amount of leverage Apple has over him.
  • erikpukinskis 4y ago
    So was Yahoo Groups at one time.
• yrgulation 4y ago
  Many many moons ago when i pointed out that FAANG are modern day fords and chryslers everyone thought i was exaggerating. Actually if you think about it they are in an even more precarious position as no one really _needs_ them and their popularity are a thing of fashion, and are far from too big to fail. Edit: Linkedin shows 300k jobs available in the us for the term "software engineer". I like to think and hope that things will be fine for those laid off.
  • bioemerl 4y ago
    No way. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, they all have very good businesses with very concrete productivity bonuses and real world advantages that they give to people, you can't make those things disappear. They also don't have good foreign competitors, like Chrysler and so on had in Japan. There are Chinese companies, but those companies largely exist thanks to their state barring competition from the outside, and I don't see it being super likely that that is a real threat, especially because if Chinese companies really start taking off the United States government will clamp down on them hard. I think these layoffs are more an example of just how crazy short-term we are thinking in the world. Everyone thought coal was going to go away, remote work was the future, tech jobs were the future! In reality we need more productivity, less labor demand, and for our smartest people to be out working on those problems, not on delivering people advertisements. All of these lay off people may end up out more distributed in the country working no boring jobs that ultimately free up butts and seats so that those butts can go take other seats for they are more necessary and important and productive.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • niij 4y ago
      > There are Chinese companies, but those companies largely exist thanks to their state barring competition from the outside, and I don't see it being super likely that that is a real threat, especially because if Chinese companies really start taking off the United States government will clamp down on them hard. TikTok is a Chinese company and is major competition for Facebook
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Amazing what an iOS update did.
  • AnonHP 4y ago
    Apart from that, I think the bigger ongoing folly here is this whole Metaverse thing.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      I used to think that, but recently tried some AR glasses that filled my whole usable field of view with an editable PowerPoint slide with clear text… yeah, the tech seems like a big deal for this new digital world
  • lovecg 4y ago
    And yet Apple is not the one getting anti-trust scrutiny… funny how that works.
• amelius 4y ago
  How many of them are severely disgruntled? Is my data safe?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• buggythebug 4y ago
  As a non-tech guy who follows the tech scene: 87000 people to run Facebook sounds a little ridiculous. These tech companies sounds like colleges these days where the number of administrators has grown 10X and the amount of teachers has stayed the same. Use your money to hire people that directly contribute to your product. Use profits to "do good" after.
  • vxNsr 4y ago
    it's not just facebook... they have oculus, insta, whatsapp, they were exploring mapping, and self driving cars at one point...
    • krn 4y ago
      When you realize that WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active users and only 55 employees at the time of its acquisition by Facebook in 2014, you start to think that those tens of thousands of employees might be more needed for Meta's ad business.
      • whatever1 4y ago
        WhatsApp was bloated for what it was. Just a chatting app. People design and implement these things in a weekend. Many interviews casually ask you to implement a chatting app. By yourself.
        • rjh29 4y ago
          Not true. WhatsApp performed exceptionally well for its scale. The team was very talented and experienced at writing optimised code. But I agree that Facebook is significantly larger in scope.
          • ninth_ant 4y ago
            It's not just that they wrote some very optimized code -- though it's true they did. They also designed the app in a way that requires very little server infrastructure compared to other chat apps, especially in the per-acquisition days. For example, they didn't store contacts/images/messages server-side as you see in Telegram, Google ChatAppOfTheWeek, FB messenger, Twitter, IG, etc. All the infrastructure and the folks required to develop and maintain it, simply didn't exist. Similar with the limited amount of data collection they did at the time -- if you don't log it you there is no reason to have a team of people to analyze it. If you don't have ads you don't need an ad sales team. Etc.
• dbrgn 4y ago
  If 11k employees are 13% of the workforce, then Meta employed roughly 85k people. Holy moly, what do all these people actually do all day long? Also, assuming an average annual wage of 80k USD, that would mean 6.8 billion USD of wage costs every year. That's quite something.
  • propogandist 4y ago
    Facebook folks usually make 6 figures, and most have a large portion of comp in stock based comp. The number is much larger.
    • dbrgn 4y ago
      I assumed that not every Facebook employee is a senior software engineer in California, but that they must have a lot of lower wage employees in non-tech jobs on other continents as well (e.g. for content moderation).
      • TulliusCicero 4y ago
        A lot of content moderators are probably contractors of some kind, not FTE's for Meta.
• washywashy 4y ago
  Genuinely curious why Meta (other big companies) hired so much during the pandemic? Did one companies make a strategic business decision to hire more based on project needs, and other companies followed on in a copy cat way? I guess maybe meta was thinking “VR will take off during pandemic and folks won’t be able to put the goggles back down ever”. I could see some companies copying it just to hedge against other companies over-recruiting and snatching some of their employees. Seems almost like a similar copy cat effort is happening now, unless they are all just admitting they over-hired.
  • intrasight 4y ago
    Lots of over-hiring. It was a competition for scarce talent with a thinking that talented head count is a prime metric. I think it is, but it only works if that talent is contributing to the bottom line. Poor HR management plays a big role too. I believe that capitalism requires ongoing "culling of the herd" - like 5% every year. This happens in many other businesses. Perhaps tech will now follow suit.
  • clolege 4y ago
    Google's grown its workforce by about 15% every year. Which adds up to a lot of people nowadays. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb...
• yalogin 4y ago
  All these companies and guys just began feeling very rich and wanted to corner the market by hiring more. This is the reason every company hired more and more people. Mark was probably very bullish on VR given covid and remote work taking off. Musk felt similarly rich and bought Twitter.
• game_the0ry 4y ago
  When these big tech layoffs happen, I always wonder what proportion of those laid off are software engineers. I would not be surprised if that figure is small.
• jcpst 4y ago
  “Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended.” It’s not over yet.
• d1algo 4y ago
  [dead]
• taylorius 4y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but if 11,000 employees is 13% of Meta's workforce, that implies they employ close to 100,000 people? Excuse me while I involuntarily spit my coffee over my keyboard.
• sagebird 4y ago
  Even though laid-off employees will lose access to Meta internal systems today, they are welcome to utilize Facebook services to stay connected to former colleagues, friends, and family members around the world. After all, it is Facebook’s mission to create a more connected world - and that will never change.
  • sagebird 4y ago
    I just want to reassure everyone that while some things are changing, Facebook’s commitment to creating a more connected world is not going away. If anything, these changes will help Facebook reach that goal more effectively- and that’s something we can all be proud of. After all, as we continue to develop new features and products to better connect people from around the world, there are always going to be challenges but if we can stay more connected we will be able to handle them in a very connected way, I believe.
• thrillgore 4y ago
  "I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here." ...but I'm going to stay and keep all the cards on the Metaverse as my personal fortune sinks with it. For 11% of you, good luck.
• jerpint 4y ago
  Have all departments been equally impacted? I am curious if machine learning engineers have also been laid off
• whatever1 4y ago
  TikTok is on a hiring spree in the US. They will get a ton of talent in great discount
• sagebird 4y ago
  While many are commenting that these layoffs are sensible given the situation, I am fearful that laying off approximately 13% of Meta employees will lead to a less connected world. I don’t think people fully understand the magnitude of step-backwards it will be in terms of people connecting in this world. Does Zuckerberg take responsibility for what this will mean to people who simply need to connect more through great products developed by Facebook and future technologies being developed by Meta?
  • sagebird 4y ago
    To the people downvoting my post- would you care to explain what possible alternatives could exist that would fulfill Facebook’s mission - “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”? I sense a deeply cynical and dismissive tone from many commenters and I sincerely wonder how many of you have given any honest thought to Facebook’s mission- or the many great products and features that support that mission. Given the importance of the mission, I find it hard to believe that cutting the workforce by 13% will have anything but dire consequences . Akin to the Middle Ages, or AI winter, humans will almost certainly suffer from being less connected. But what I haven’t heard is calls governments or ngos stepping in to provide funding to lighten the shockwaves of this disruption to connectivity. Surely, this must be considered. When comparing Meta’s mission to that of- say- automakers, or financial lending institutions- isn’t it clear that creating a more connected world should take priority?
  • britch 4y ago
    What is your concern here? What does "a more connected world" actually mean?
    • sagebird 4y ago
      Do you think that Meta could be worth 273 billion, and yet promulgate a false, inaccurate or misleading mission statement? Perhaps, but it would not seem like it would instill much confidence in the company leadership.
      • 4y ago
• jimcavel888 4y ago
• synergy20 4y ago
  In 2000, some Hi Tech companies laid off 50%, e.g. Motorola, Meta now has 1 out of 8 laid off, seems a lot, might not be enough in the end though.
• CamelRocketFish 4y ago
  Could the title match the post tile to follow the hackernews guidelines?
• jacobsenscott 4y ago
  The world runs on certain types of software. I doesn't run on social media, or video streaming, or "AI/ML", or search. So it doesn't actually run on FAANG companies. It is no surprise they are shedding workers when the free money runs out. But if you are willing to work on "boring software" that provides actual economic value - logistics, HR/Payroll, or really anything people actually pay to use because it boosts their productivity - I wouldn't worry too much. This was true during the .com bust, 2008 dip, and it will be true now.
  • Reason077 4y ago
    Sure, FAANG may make a lot of frivolous stuff (Metaverse, anyone?) but also a lot of boring software that the world really does run on now days. Google especially.
    • TremendousJudge 4y ago
      Maybe not in the US, but WhatsApp is pretty important messaging infrastructure in big chunks of the world
    • jacobsenscott 4y ago
      Sure - as does amazon and apple - I doubt you'll see layoffs in those specific departments at those companies. I suppose I shouldn't have said FAANG as most of them have some core business that makes sense, Meta being the exception.
  • idk1 4y ago
    I would certainly make a case the the world runs on the two As and the G of FAANG. The world runs a fair amount on Amazon deliveries and aws. The world runs a fair amount on gmail and google searches. And the world runs on a fair amount of Apple products.
  • yalogin 4y ago
    I don’t agree at all. These companies are all super important and provide valuable services. If they vanish suddenly tomorrow that hole will be felt by every single human one way or the other. You are going back to 1970s for your comparison but that is not where we are
• hbn 4y ago
  > Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I mean people who had financial gain on the line (like yourselves) pretended this was the case so you could cash in at the time and then pull the rug once it wasn't working any more (as you're doing now), but everyone with half a brain knew it wasn't sustainable. Literally how could that acceleration be permanent? With the insane exponential growth inflated by covid in 2020/2021, you'd have a few years before these big tech companies would have to be gaining more users than exist on earth.
  • roflyear 4y ago
    FB is making $30+bn a year profit, and is laying off people to reduce costs by $2b. They could continue to pay these people. Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium company would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the business. Some even until after that point. Layoffs are awful. Large corps, nah. Just lay people off if we get a little nervous! Note, I don't think these corps are entitled to employ you. Absolutely not. I just think the corporate situation we got ourselves in is really nasty.
    • 8b16380d 4y ago
      Completely agree.
    • abstractmath 4y ago
      > Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium company would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the business. Some even until after that point This is super idealized. How many layoffs have been going on in startup land recently?
      • skrebbel 4y ago
        You mean teeny tiny cutesy startups like Stripe and Twilio?
        • abstractmath 4y ago
• glassjawjon 4y ago
  Is anyone else thinking this is very similar to Stripe CEO layoff letter(1)? Sure all lay-off letters have some similarity but I’m pretty sure any automated plagiarism detection system would flag this. 1: https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email-to-stripe-employees https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email...
• Reason077 4y ago
  Z̶u̶c̶k̶ Zorg fires 1 million: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg
• DarkGroku 4y ago
  FB still making 4Billion in profit, all the comments here dont seem to talk about that Twitter wasnt profitable, FB is and laid off 4x the amount of employees, Zuck just saw Musk do it and thought itd be a perfect time while the attention is on Musk and Twitter, that letter Zuck wrote is sick and sounds like its written by a sad emotionless robot he brags about how profitable Meta is in that letter its pathetic, reminds me of the 70s and Reagan and neoliberalism making changes to laws to allow capital flight from New York to the south and firing all the well paid factory workers in the Bronx 10,000 families now without a breadwinner over night Zuck blew through billions on his VR research that no ones buying and just saw the perfect opening to sharpen his technocrat knives and surgically remove 11,000 employees even though they all contributed to making Meta be 4B in profit and it was Zuck who blew billions he needs his stock to bounce back so he can continue buying the rest of Hawaii
  • hbn 4y ago
    All these layoffs seem to follow the same format of "we're sad to have to let you all go even though business is booming and we're pulling in more money than ever!" I assume it's for the shareholders. A plain "we're laying people off" letter without the asterisk of how good they're doing is just asking for people to cash out.
• cnees 4y ago
  "We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas [like] our long-term vision for the metaverse" Imagine laying off eleven thousand people so you can keep clinging to the disintegrating corpse of the metaverse.
  • romanovcode 4y ago
    I wonder if no-one from higher-ups in Meta tell Zuckerberg that it is not going to happen and explain to him what sunk cost fallacy is.
    • warinukraine 4y ago
      Anyone who says that to him will get fired, and that makes sense: In his mind, if you don't believe the vision that he's going all in in, then you're just detracting.
      • ausudhz 4y ago
        Another delusional CEO practically
    • fullshark 4y ago
      Maybe Sandberg did, and he disagreed and now she's gone with a bunch of stuff leaked to try and embarrass her.
  • jakeinspace 4y ago
    I’d feel pretty embarrassed right now to be working in VR at meta while seeing coworkers getting laid off.
    • datalopers 4y ago
      • archon810 4y ago
• SeriousM 4y ago
  Mark's statement has a fineprint at the end about future uncertainty and "forward-looking" statements. I guess that's the new way to state your point and at the same time change the meaning of it in the fineprint.
  • ericpauley 4y ago
    This is very standard (and legally necessary) boilerplate in any public statement.
• LongShip87 4y ago
  I recently left my well paying job in a startup to pursue my hobbies for a few months. Now I am looking for a job again. I wonder how will I find a job with so many Meta and Twitter engineers flooding the market :/ PS: I have only worked with startups including a YC startup.
  • om42 4y ago
    We're hiring! Reach out to me via email, it's in my profile.
• Exuma 4y ago
  Sweet baby rays
• redleggedfrog 4y ago
  Alright people the talent pool just got more fish. Go get 'em!
• rejor121 4y ago
  A lot of people are spouting doom and gloom for the entire industry, but I feel like Facebook had this coming. Especially since they lost billions in Meta. It seems to me that there are a lot of software jobs out there, and companies can’t seem to find enough people. But that said, I’m sure the story is probably different in Silicon Valley
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• temp0826 4y ago
  Yeesh. Was planning on returning to tech work after a couple year hiatus in a couple months. Between this and twitter there may be some competition (:
  • clavalle 4y ago
    Perhaps. And perhaps some will go and create their own companies and create more demand.
• MasterYoda 4y ago
  87000 people is working at meta just now. What are all those people doing? Why is so many needed? How many are developer, manager, marketers, seller, anti spam/desinformation stuff etc etc?
  • sh4rks 4y ago
    87,000 people and they still can't fix the bugs in the Instagram android app
• clavalle 4y ago
  Considering the severance, Meta might have just realeased the biggest pre-seed funded class ever.
  • vthallam 4y ago
    I work here and wasn't affected. But that's how I saw the severance. Anyone who doesn't have visa issues could literally pursue their ideas for the next 6 months.
    • throwaw20221107 4y ago
      >6 months more like 6 years, unless you're a new grad with no savings, or unless you somehow managed to burn through your 200K/yr salary every year. Probably decades if you migrate to an LCOL. Edit: oh, you meant 6 months on the severance alone. Yep
• achow 4y ago
  > We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas — like our AI discovery engine, our ads and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse. Conviction for Metaverse is unwavering. Hope some good comes out of it in future.
• beej71 4y ago
  "Desk sharing"... I wonder with the cost-cutting appeal of smaller real estate footprints and remote work if the huge campus era is actually drawing to a close.
  • debug-desperado 4y ago
    Maybe it is. They're definitely reducing footprint for satellite offices: https://www.statesman.com/story/business/real-estate/2022/11/03/facebook-meta-austin-tx-move-not-happening/69617143007/ https://www.statesman.com/story/business/real-estate/2022/11...
• Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  Meanwhile, the stock is up 8% today. Because maybe this shows Mark isn't as crazy as investors thought.
  • wollsmoth 4y ago
    Well he apparently kept all the ones working on second life VR. It's a gamble.
• dolmen 4y ago
  > We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive information. But we’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell. E-mail address still working for the day? Is this the standard way to layoff employees in the US?
  • dpkirchner 4y ago
    I wonder if they've limited outgoing emails so they may only be sent to internal users.
• nelsonic 4y ago
  Facebook ("Meta") made $46.7 Billion in Profit in 2021. They have $42 Billion in cash. If the average engineer is paid $150k then these 11k people would cost the company 150,000 x 11,000 = 1,650,000,000 ($1.6 Billion/year) Mark Zuckerberg could _easily_ afford to keep these people employed and focus their efforts towards improving the safety of the platform e.g: stopping Human Trafficking, Drug Dealing and Child Abuse all documented extensively in the Facebook Papers. They are failing to protect the most vulnerable people in society while sitting on a _mountain_ of cash. Shame on you Mark.
  • AnonC 4y ago
    If Mark Zuckerberg had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be around with Meta and all the companies it owns/runs. But he has good company among many other CEOs who’d rather cut the workforce and earn more bonuses for themselves.
  • jrochkind1 4y ago
    When doing "how much staff costs" calculations, you typically have to add on ~30-50% on top of salary for employer's share of taxes, and benefits (health insurance in USA is very non-trivial), and other assorted overhead. But your point stands.
  • pb7 4y ago
    >If the average engineer is paid $150k Haha. It’s more like twice this, with another ~50% in overhead costs like healthcare, payroll taxes, real estate, etc.
    • rbanffy 4y ago
      They have employees outside Silicon Valley
      • mgraczyk 4y ago
        Those engineers still make much more than this.
      • 4y ago
• nathan_gold 4y ago
  Why is this identical to Stripe’s layoff letter https://stripe.com/en-ca/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email-to-stripe-employees https://stripe.com/en-ca/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons...?
• bizzodes 4y ago
  Imagine complying with the covid vaccine mandates against what you otherwise would have done, and then you get laid off anyway. What a gut punch.
• raxits 4y ago
  Best is to know finance/unit economy/burn etc of your employer in good as well as bad times!
• AnonC 4y ago
  Seriously, what exactly does “I take responsibility for this” mean? Is Mark Zuckerberg going to resign as CEO or step down from the board or go with no pay for a year or two (including bonuses)? He says he’s accountable, but how exactly does this move hit him hard (except for a punch to his ego)? If there are no consequences of significance for him, what’s the meaning of those words? What do the people who aren’t laid off to trust anymore?
• rybosworld 4y ago
  It's wild to me that a CEO can simultaneously take responsibility for the decision to over hire, and also suffer none of the financial consequences. In fact, META stock is up 7% on this news, so Zuck has made money on this decision. I think that's a major inefficiency in modern corporations. Executives are the last to face consequences when they make a bad decision.
  • Invictus0 4y ago
    Zucc's net worth is down more than $100B? Should he lose an arm too?
  • bsaul 4y ago
    if you think stock up means zuck made money for this (good) decision, then you've got to admit stock being down 50% during the last year was zuck loosing money based on his previous (bad) decisions..
• djkivi 4y ago
  Over 1000 points and 900 comments in 4 hours and not #1 on the front page?
• hinkley 4y ago
  I totally would have been part of this layoff if I’d responded to any of the many, many FB recruiters who have contacted me in the last 18 months. Why didn’t I reply? Several reasons, but importantly because if you can’t say anything nice sometimes it’s best not to say anything at all.
  • pm90 4y ago
    I explicitly asked them to put me on a blacklist because there's no way in hell I'm working for Facebook. They may not be directly culpable, but they allowed their platform to be used in ways to subvert democratic norms and institutions (West), promote and coordinate Genocide (Muslims in India and Myanmar) etc. I honestly consider it better to work for Raytheon; at least the weapons they make are regulated and subject to stronger scrutiny.
  • simsla 4y ago
    Same feeling. I initially passed on the offer because I couldn't work remotely from my country of choice. They later contacted me when that'd changed, but I'd found another job by then that I was happy with. (Plus, the whole "do I want to work for them?" thing.) Probably would've been let go, because less tenure + nonstandard working arrangement + mass firings is not a good combo.
• fredgrott 4y ago
  I have a question... If we assume that during the last 20 to 30 years that there has been no gain in actual real production efficiency increases(real reason for inequality is non-investments in actual production efficiencies by VCs and hedge funds); where is the call to re-align in VCs and hedge funds to investing in production efficiencies directly (I say directly as investing in climate green energy is an indirect production efficiency play)?
• ThinkBeat 4y ago
  What is the composition of roles that are getting fired? I naturally tend to think about programmers but Meta (and the other big tech companies that have had big firings) have roles all over the place Are they mostly getting rid of programmers?
  • pm90 4y ago
    Anecdotally from Blind its mostly recruiters and business ops, but engineers as well (but not exclusively). Distribution is not yet known.
• Joel_Mckay 4y ago
  I think 11000 people are going to find a brighter future at a nicer company. Does anyone under 40 still use Facebook/Meta anymore? =)
  • jfdbcv 4y ago
    Ya, Instagram is quite popular among the younger generation, actually!
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• zffr 4y ago
  > I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go. So spending a few billion less on the metaverse was not an option?
  • system2 4y ago
    Not a fan of Zucc but he is trying something. What else would you do to Facebook to save it from TikTok's takeover?
• system2 4y ago
  So from the looks of it, the investors see this as a good move. In 5 days Meta stock went up nearly 20% from $82 to $105. Dramatic news but company holds stronger than last week.
• stillametamate 4y ago
• wickedsickeune 4y ago
  For those wondering what "accountability" and "responsibility" should look like: They do not need to mean punishment, they can just mean "clear, concrete intent for remediation and improvement". The remediation part is implemented by the severance package. The intent for improvement, is nowhere to be seen. When somebody makes a mistake, punishing on its own is meaningless. The point is to remedy the mistake (eg pay money if the mistake incurred a financial loss) and prevent further future mistakes. No, the CEO should not resign, they should just identify why things went SO wrong and show a clear plan on how to prevent such mistakes from the future. If someone deletes a database, I don't expect them to resign, I expect them to restore it from a backup, and find a way to prevent such mistakes from the future (eg run migrations in a reversible transaction)
  • ergocoder 4y ago
    They did. It is the over hiring, and they rectify it by laying off people and going into hiring freeze.
• obert 4y ago
  The timing of the layoff, right before the holiday season, is especially harsh...
  • sumitgt 4y ago
    On the day after the US election as well. Great way to avoid making the headlines.
• obert 4y ago
  The fact that the company is still investing in the development of the metaverse, while letting go of thousands of employees, may not sit well with some... this could be just "I was wrong, part 1"
  • stillametamate 4y ago
    Zuck made it very clear in the last earnings call that he's committed to the metaverse. The stock price is up a lot of the layoffs, but I don't think it's sunk in that that they cut elsewhere.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  > > I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. He's not taking responsibility. Taking responsibility would look like him saying "And I'm going to personally give 1% of my shares to those who are leaving spread equally". Responsibility means being willing to sacrifice something personal to make it right (or less wrong). Zuck owns 13.6% of 2.687B shares, at a $104 a piece that 1% share would be about $30k per exiting employee. And basically no skin off his back. That's true responsibility and ownership.
  • ergocoder 4y ago
    Isn't it included in the severance packages? Just curious. Or you want the severance package to be 30k more?
    • maerF0x0 4y ago
      Severance is a distributed load that all shareholders + employees bear. Taking personal responsibility means personal action to resolve. Not making a decision to use the resources of others for one's own guilt. (at least this is my own ethical framework)
  • nell 4y ago
    He was worth $130B. Now, $34B. Hasn't sold any significant piece of it while he knew there are risks with changing the direction of the company. That should count for something.
  • cortesoft 4y ago
    Isn't the plummeting stock price him taking responsibility and ownership? He has lost way more from that than 1% of his stock ownership.
• obert 4y ago
  Like with all lay offs, the move to cut discretionary spending and perks may also impact employee morale and motivation, and the decision to extend the hiring freeze may also limit potential growth within the company... it's going to get worse before getting better
  • stillametamate 4y ago
    Absolutely. The Meta campus is sad right now. Philz closed. The woodshop closed. Some of the perks from before the pandemic are gone. People are getting paid a lot less. Unless you actually believe in building the metaverse or can't find something comparable that's not sinking, there just isn't much reason to stay.
• obert 4y ago
  laying off 11k employees while still claiming to be "historically important" and "profitable"... Poor attempt to stay positive IMO
• Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  I know a couple of my European friends were bitterly disappointed to be kept on, over there you get a nice little exit package mandated in law.
• sytelus 4y ago
  Meta is burning $10B/yr to build Metaverse. They are also loading up on massive debt. This is the part I don’t understand. Development is expensive but NOT this expensive! A back of the envelope calculation suggests that one can build an entire search engine infrastructure and product for the same price. Something like HoloLens from scratch would cost LESS than half of that price. A full competitive self driving E2E stack development will cost about half. Developing entire smartphone hardware and OS from scratch would cost about a third of that money. Moon worthy space rocket development will cost a tenth of this budget. One can do so much with $10B that it is absolutely mind blowing.
  • mike00632 4y ago
    I have very similar thoughts, especially when I compare the Metaverse spots to the products that video game companies make for way less money that are comparably much better. I guess video game companies have a reputation for over-working and under-paying their employees though.
  • throwty345df 4y ago
    I watched a presentation in which it was explained that they got Microsoft to create a version of Office for their metaverse and other companies to do similar things. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft is not doing this for free, so generally speaking I think their expenses include all the spending related to this kind of partnerships, which can add up to quite a lot when you have a whole ecosystem to build. This is not just software and hardware engineering. With this in mind, the $10bn figure looks much more reasonable and even disciplined for the goal pursued. Whether or not this goal is the right one is another question. I personally think Meta is misguided here and this aventure will fail miserably.
  • skizm 4y ago
    This is completely incorrect. They took on ~$10B in debt recently for stock buybacks when debt was cheap. They make around $28B in profit after metaverse spending and have $40B cash on hand.
    • sytelus 4y ago
• jollyllama 4y ago
  It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of what % of Meta employees are remote, what % are not, and what % of each are laid off.
• alasdair_ 4y ago
  I worked at Facebook when covid first hit. Zuckerburg treated everyone in the company very, very well. There was a blanket "don't worry about performance, take care of your families" guarantee that honestly was an enormous help. The thing that particularly struck me though was the way he handled contract workers like (some of) the kitchen staff, cleaners, etc. These people don't work for Facebook and he had zero obligation to them, yet he paid all of their wages for the full length of the pandemic just so they could stay afloat. If it were just about the money, I doubt he'd have done this.
  • musicale 4y ago
    I may dislike Facebook, but this is great! Kudos to Zuck for doing the right thing for his employees.
  • fatnoah 4y ago
    > I worked at Facebook when covid first hit Same here. I've been doing this since before the year 2000, and can't imagine any other company I've worked for treating employees this well. In this current cycle, I was laid off from my job and my severance was zero days. The only thing I got was the mandatory WARN act time and verting of option that were worth about 2 weeks of my base pay.
  • antipaul 4y ago
    My Facebook interview process was not only more professional, objective, and relevant than any other, it was also actually enjoyable, as I said elsewhere. I wish there was a biotech with FB’s culture.
  • tomerbd 4y ago
    amazing and imagine if this was not just a common cold
  • sytelus 4y ago
    I am particularly sad about current state of Meta. Regardless of what people think of Facebook and Zuck, he was unapologetically a hacker. I visited FB campus few times and emphasis on hacker culture everywhere was just immensely delightful. He knew the value of good hacker and raised bar for the compensation across the entire industry. Ship your code today was absolutely refreshing. Number of open source projects that has came out of Meta is unparalleled for number of employees. MetaAI had been well protected and is one of the strongest engine for progress in AI. I always viewed it as a company run by a hacker for hackers.
• posedge 4y ago
  I'm surprised by this direct and candid tone.
• alasdair_ 4y ago
  It's amazing how similar this whole thing is to Stripe's layoff letter, down to the exact ordering of severance, PTO, RSU, career services, immigration details and the thing about everyone losing access immediately due to sensitive information but also keeping email access for 24 hours and the bit about recruiting being most affected. It's almost a verbatim copy.
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    I was thinking the exact same thing. It's quite striking.
• lbriner 4y ago
  Sad but completely unsurprising. People should realise by now that when a company starts a massive hiring boom, it will inevitably bust. Why? Because as many have said already, if you have tonnes of cash, it is easier to hire loads of people rather than hire appropriate and effective people. The fact that we are talking about such an enormous number just shows how many people are part of the hive but probably not really contributing much to the company overall. The worst part is that some people who are really effective will get caught up in the layoffs paying for the inefficiency of corporate structures.
• itissid 4y ago
  From the immigration H1b PoV looks of it a few months of severance and then there is 60 days when the clock starts ticking to find a job. Not bad. From what I understand the people where the WARN act is active they have to give atleast 60 day notice in case of mass layoffs(this is different from the 60 day grace period for H1bs to transfer status).
• Leires 4y ago
  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.
  • blobbers 4y ago
    Take my downvote. "Psychological experiments" on users is what every company; user and market research. Enabling "psyops" is simply building a platform; this isn't the first platform that his been misused or scraped for other purposes. You get spam robo dialers? It wasn't from meta... etc. etc. etc.
  • throwawaymeta4 4y ago
    Its much much worse than just psychological experiments. Meta currently stands accused as an enabler of a genocide in Myanmar [1], and provides a platform to spread massive hate against Muslims in India and elsewhere [2,3,4,5]. For folks trying to do bothsidesism here and bring out how great they've been, I am sorry but there is no excuse for enablers of Fascism. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... 2. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-... 3. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-spread-religious-hatred-in-india-internal-documents-show-11635016354 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-to-s... 4. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-rights-group-sues-facebook-over-claims-it-removes-hate-groups https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-lying-muslim-r... 5. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-muslims-islamophobia/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...
  • Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  • dang 4y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33534643.
• itsjustround 4y ago
  All the people who failed META's shitty interview's are quietly laughing now. The world is round folks.
• Animats 4y ago
  How much of the "metaverse" group is being laid off? Anyone know?
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  > I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that. I wonder what this means in practice? Nothing? Ok, great.
• oldstrangers 4y ago
  Anyone have a quick estimate as to the number of layoffs across the tech sector in the last 3 months? Absolutely wild.
  • Sirened 4y ago
    https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi puts it at ~40k
• nicolashahn 4y ago
  Some data from the inside: Reality Labs (AR/VR) hit less hard than the rest of the company. No one on my team or adjacent teams let go. Most bootcampers (unallocated new hires) are gone, even ones that were performing well. Low performer from my past team outside RL was let go, so it appears performance was a factor for a lot of roles, rather than just axing entire teams based on business need. edit: updated to clear up some confusion about the meaning of RL and bootcampers
  • blamazon 4y ago
    (RL == Reinforcement Learning) Edit: I was wrong but this is why acronyms without explanation are annoying.
    • rwiggum 4y ago
      incorrect. RL = reality labs. the VR and metaverse stuff.
    • magicseth 4y ago
      Reality Labs?
    • nicolashahn 4y ago
      Nope, other comments are correct, Reality Labs, aka AR/VR and other hardware
    • rcdexta 4y ago
      I think he is talking about Reality Labs division
  • ml_basics 4y ago
    > Most bootcampers are gone, even ones that were performing well. What are bootcampers, does this just mean recent hires? Or people who came in with no specialist skills who rotate until they find a team?
    • nicolashahn 4y ago
• skee8383 4y ago
  Meanwhile all you hear on the mainstream news is "Labor shortage" "No one wants to work" "Companies are having trouble finding talent". This smells like 2008 all over again. Housing market is tanking, MSM is lying about employment numbers. Companies are lying about how many people they are actually hiring. I went through all this back in 08. you'd put in applications and never hear anything back, then the next day you'd see the exact position you applied for listed on the job board again.
  • mertd 4y ago
    Labor participation is still below pre-pandemic levels. Most labor numbers are dominated by blue collar or service jobs. They are not fungible with tech labor.
    • skee8383 4y ago
      The numbers are made up. They always cite "polls" as a source. Strangely enough i've never been polled...
• lovelearning 4y ago
  > I’ve decided to...let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. It's phrased as if those 11,000 were itching to go away all this time. Then Mark, in his infinite benevolence, "let" them finally "go." He hath freed the birds from their golden cages.
• zombiwoof 4y ago
  meta hiring bar was ridiculous compared to the quality of their code. i passed the bullshit interview, standards was higher than Google, and then joined and saw some of the worst code/designs i've ever seen. at least Google code quality was fantastic. fuck mark and his 1000 acres he stole on Kauai. karma is a bitch.
• ScriptCrash 4y ago
  Wonder if "day in the life as a 23 year old product manager at Meta" still works there...
• troyvit 4y ago
  When somebody in Zuckerberg's type of role says, "I take responsibility for that," how exactly do they see that responsibility play out? Unrelated but that's some nice severance.
• transfire 4y ago
  Honestly I don’t have any idea where this metaverse thing is or how to get to it.
• m1117 4y ago
  Facebook employees are so much luckier than the poor twitter employees that no one cared about.
• ppjim 4y ago
  One thing that struck me is the similarity in the wording of the Stripe and Meta layoff memos. They appear to have been written by the same AI. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/stripe-lays-off-14-of-workforce-read-founders-email-to-employees/articleshow/95298642.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/stripe-lays...
• didibus 4y ago
  > But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth Interesting, so the cust cuttings aren't about being sustainable or avoiding loss, but to meet future growth expectations? Couldn't they just have like sustained a break even point until economy recovers?
• bartread 4y ago
  > At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. There was similar wording to this in the recent Shopify announcement. I must admit, I was frustrated by it then, and I'm frustrated by it now. "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration?" Yeah, sure, many people who don't understand the concept of regression to the mean predicted a permanent acceleration. But here's the thing: if you thought that after months of being cooped up most people were just going to carry on sitting round their houses playing Runescape and jacking off, or never visit the shops again, you are an idiot. Now, I will grant you, there were some silver linings to the pandemic, and some people did kind of enjoy it, but there were also a lot of people crawling the walls who couldn't wait to be let off the leash again. Just look at what's happened with the travel industry and holiday chaos this past summer, at least here in the UK. I saw Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan recently. I've got quite a lot of hostility for Meta, due to the societal damage, and personal cost to individuals, for which it's responsible, but Mark Zuckerberg is an intelligent and interesting guy. Definitely worth listening to, not least of which because he actually comes across as a human being in this podcast episode rather than some sort of odd robot. I'm incredibly disappointed that he got taken in by this idea of a permanent off trend shift to online and beyond him - and beyond Shopify - this kind of, "hurr durr, we got it wrong, wut you gunna do <<shrugs>>," justification for layoffs is going to get really old really quickly. There's something really wrong with corporate governance that can look at an unprecedented situation like COVID and then jump to the conclusion that it's going to permanently change human behaviour in the round, disregarding all previous trends: humans are, after all, still human.
  • bonney_io 4y ago
    > some people did kind of enjoy it, but there were also a lot of people crawling the walls who couldn't wait to be let off the leash again And what did people turn to? Social media.... VR... Sorry, Zuck, not buying it.
• CosmicShadow 4y ago
  But can they hire at least 1 person who can fix all the glaring user interface bugs on their core web app? The trade would be worth it.
• irsagent 4y ago
  It sad to see the direction of the company go complete VR and AR. If it is the next product it would seem to catch on early with the demo.
• tombert 4y ago
  Fantastic. I just got laid off from my (non-Meta) job, and now I have to compete with thousands of other software engineers. I suppose I knew that the cushy absurd-salary-days of software engineering had to come to a close at some point, but I guess I was just hoping it would happening after I retired.
  • tkiolp4 4y ago
    Just said you worked for Meta in your resume and you just being laid off. Bang! Instant hire.
• dm03514 4y ago
  Can the market absorb all these layoffs? Will it significantly drive salaries down from peak Covid?