4 ms·

Not too surprising more lay offs are coming. I joined Facebook in 2017 and they had around 40k people (left in 2020). By 2022 they had 80k. I met with my firs

Not too surprising more lay offs are coming. I joined Facebook in 2017 and they had around 40k people (left in 2020). By 2022 they had 80k. I met with my first manager (he’s a director now) at FB a few weeks after the lay offs were announced and even he was totally puzzled as to why Meta hired so many people. In his own words, he couldn’t see what all those extra people were doing. I do wonder if that number of employees is just inflated due to Meta acquiring a bunch of companies (VR)

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Same with many other well funded unicorns and scale-ups where my friends got hired in the hiring spree from 2020 - 2022, especially in the crypto and stock space. They hired too fast and the new hires didn't have the chance to get ramped up to speed at all so most of the heavy lifting was still done by those with longer tenure in the company who knew the systems well but were too busy to keep it running and sprinting on adding new features to have time to bring the new hires up to speed, so the new hires were idling for moths doing nothing while collecting golden paychecks. Probably now the companies realized they overhired, for an economic future that didn't pan out, and are now correcting this as they can still run profitably with the workforce they had before the mass hiring spree which brought them no benefits.
- adamors 4y ago
  Problem with these layoffs are tho that they will affect long tenured folk as well as newish hires. Dumb decision after dumb decision.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    As someone else here said it, and as I've learned from my friends in management, layoffs aren't purely random. They're letting go of the people who's compensation is higher than the value the company perceived the employee adds or fails to add to the company relative to their compensation. If you've negociated an amazing compensation at the hight of the hiring boom aka the great resignation, when the market was red hot, but your performance reviews aren't stellar, chances are you're on your way out. But if you haven't negociated a high raise in the last few years and you're getting great performance reviews, chances are you're staying. It's relatively clear cut. No company is letting go of people who do great work at market rate. They're letting go of people they perceive to be underperforming relative to their above market rate wages. It's that simple. We can go into semantics that your performance review in most cases never accurately reflects the value you add or don't add to the company, but this has always been like that, especially in the large companies where the big layoffs are happening. You're always at the mercy of your manager giving you great reviews.
    - clnq 4y ago
      Many top performers leave after layoffs. They know they can easily get work elsewhere and don't want to deal with the post-layoff chaos or job uncertainty. There are also many forces pulling them away from the company - headhunter pressure increases after layoffs, their fired friends are going to a set of companies (or starting their own) and asking them to come over, and the cynicism that spreads in companies after mass layoffs (where some people are always laid off unjustly, some promising projects are often spun down indiscriminately, some critical areas of code almost always become unmaintainable post layoffs, etc). Layoffs never just get rid of the targeted people. They usually get rid of employee morale and top performers, too.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        I never said layoffs were not unjustly, I said they're not random like people think but target a subset of employees that the company currently flagged as undesirable for whatever flawed metrics each company uses. >There are also many forces pulling them away from the company - headhunter pressure increases after layoffs, their fired friends are going to a set of companies If they're so many forces pulling them away form the company like headhunter or colleagues, why are we acting like the layoffs are a tragedy to happen to them? The way you phrased it sounds like a blessing.
        throwanem 4y ago
        The argument is that layoffs tend to incur follow-on decisions to depart being made by people who were not laid off. I don't necessarily have an opinion about that - I've seen exoduses, but not (yet?) for that reason - but my inbox at least corroborates a sharp increase in the rate of headhunting lately.
        clnq 4y ago
        The "tragedy of layoffs" is not that the top talent won't find other work. It's more about the people who will be unjustly affected. Those that are let go through no fault of their own, those whose morale and work satisfaction is destroyed, those who were hopeful for and dedicated to projects now being canned, those who will have visa uncertainty, those who have to go through the stress of a job change, and others put in similar circumstances. Top talent is not excluded from this. But they will find work.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> just inflated due to Meta acquiring a bunch of companies (VR) that might account for ~1500 people. All areas of the company have inflated.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Same with many other well funded unicorns and scale-ups where my friends got hired in the hiring spree from 2020 - 2022, especially in the crypto and stock space. They hired too fast and the new hires didn't have the chance to get ramped up to speed at all so most of the heavy lifting was still done by those with longer tenure in the company who knew the systems well but were too busy to keep it running and sprinting on adding new features to have time to bring the new hires up to speed, so the new hires were idling for moths doing nothing while collecting golden paychecks. Probably now the companies realized they overhired, for an economic future that didn't pan out, and are now correcting this as they can still run profitably with the workforce they had before the mass hiring spree which brought them no benefits.

adamors 4y ago
Problem with these layoffs are tho that they will affect long tenured folk as well as newish hires. Dumb decision after dumb decision.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  As someone else here said it, and as I've learned from my friends in management, layoffs aren't purely random. They're letting go of the people who's compensation is higher than the value the company perceived the employee adds or fails to add to the company relative to their compensation. If you've negociated an amazing compensation at the hight of the hiring boom aka the great resignation, when the market was red hot, but your performance reviews aren't stellar, chances are you're on your way out. But if you haven't negociated a high raise in the last few years and you're getting great performance reviews, chances are you're staying. It's relatively clear cut. No company is letting go of people who do great work at market rate. They're letting go of people they perceive to be underperforming relative to their above market rate wages. It's that simple. We can go into semantics that your performance review in most cases never accurately reflects the value you add or don't add to the company, but this has always been like that, especially in the large companies where the big layoffs are happening. You're always at the mercy of your manager giving you great reviews.
  - clnq 4y ago
    Many top performers leave after layoffs. They know they can easily get work elsewhere and don't want to deal with the post-layoff chaos or job uncertainty. There are also many forces pulling them away from the company - headhunter pressure increases after layoffs, their fired friends are going to a set of companies (or starting their own) and asking them to come over, and the cynicism that spreads in companies after mass layoffs (where some people are always laid off unjustly, some promising projects are often spun down indiscriminately, some critical areas of code almost always become unmaintainable post layoffs, etc). Layoffs never just get rid of the targeted people. They usually get rid of employee morale and top performers, too.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      I never said layoffs were not unjustly, I said they're not random like people think but target a subset of employees that the company currently flagged as undesirable for whatever flawed metrics each company uses. >There are also many forces pulling them away from the company - headhunter pressure increases after layoffs, their fired friends are going to a set of companies If they're so many forces pulling them away form the company like headhunter or colleagues, why are we acting like the layoffs are a tragedy to happen to them? The way you phrased it sounds like a blessing.
      - throwanem 4y ago
        The argument is that layoffs tend to incur follow-on decisions to depart being made by people who were not laid off. I don't necessarily have an opinion about that - I've seen exoduses, but not (yet?) for that reason - but my inbox at least corroborates a sharp increase in the rate of headhunting lately.
      - clnq 4y ago
        The "tragedy of layoffs" is not that the top talent won't find other work. It's more about the people who will be unjustly affected. Those that are let go through no fault of their own, those whose morale and work satisfaction is destroyed, those who were hopeful for and dedicated to projects now being canned, those who will have visa uncertainty, those who have to go through the stress of a job change, and others put in similar circumstances. Top talent is not excluded from this. But they will find work.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> just inflated due to Meta acquiring a bunch of companies (VR) that might account for ~1500 people. All areas of the company have inflated.