Ex-Facebooker here too, also during that time. Zuck's response to Covid definitely had upsides, particularly (as you mention) the continued payment of contract

Ex-Facebooker here too, also during that time. Zuck's response to Covid definitely had upsides, particularly (as you mention) the continued payment of contractors even though offices were closed. There were downsides too. The "Don't worry about perf" also meant you couldn't get promoted that half and there was no recognition for better performance, which sort of sucked for people whose projects had come to fruition (where they reap the rewards of impact). Hypothetically you could get recognized in H2 2020 but in reality it didn't really work like that most of the time. But look, the big problem with Facebook is twofold: 1. Apple's "do not track" feature really cut the ad business off at its knees. You can support that on privacy grounds but that shouldn't obscure the issue that a platform being able to do that while maintaining that benefit themselves is actually a huge problem (and it makes a big case for Apple acting anticompetitively); 2. (This is the big one) Zuck has no vision for the company. That's the core problem. Assuming pandemic growth would continue (as he claims) isn't the problem. This first took form in response to the spread of misinformation in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Facebook decided to try and determine objective truth in posts. That's never going to work and never going to make anyone happy. Controversial topics get amplified. But labelling misinformation treats this as a content problem when it's a user behaviour problem. It's your weird uncle posting articles about chips in vaccines. The content doesn't matter. The behaviour does. But here's the big one: Facebook has long viewed products on two axes: audience and medium. Twitter, for example, goes to a large audience. WhatsApp, small audiences. Medium is essentiaally this progression: text -> image -> video -> VR -> AR. It explains the purchase of Oculus and fits with the metaverse. But there's literally no business case for the metaverse. Nobody wants it. Phones are convenient. Wearing headsets isn't. If we can ever build AR glasses (and that's far from a certainty) then maybe that might work but there are significant technical problems (eg matching focus, true blacks). So 11,000 people got let go today because of bad decisions made at the very top that they had nothing to do with and no control over. Sure Zuck has lots a bunch of paper value but whether you have $100 billion or $30 billion, you're fine.