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Two rounds of layoffs seems to say something that one round doesn't. You would expect that all things being equal there is never a scenario where it is better t
by zmmmmm 4y ago
Two rounds of layoffs seems to say something that one round doesn't. You would expect that all things being equal there is never a scenario where it is better to do two cuts instead of just one. So why?
a) things were much worse than realised. Maybe but it would have to be a big shock coming because Meta's general performance has held up OK, certainly nothing that would warrant this.
b) HR reasons? some sort of requirement that prevented them doing it all at once? Someone said that this time around they were doing masses of performance reviews. So perhaps the first wave were arbitrary cuts but they couldn't do the second without actual evidence of poor performance backing it?
c) change of plans? Mark wants to go all in AI instead of Metaverse and this means grand restructuring of his whole workforce? You'd think that would be very evident from which teams get laid off (we'll see).
- super256 4y agob) and c) It is exactly Mark’s plan. He called 2023 “the year of efficiency”, meaning that he wants to flatten the whole organization and get closer to startup velocity (and cost). He communicated this theme during performance reviews, as suggested by the article.
- zmmmmm 4y agoit seems striking that Carmack left pretty much with that criticism and Mark is now probably executing exactly what Carmack would have prescribed. It'd be interesting to correlate how closely the thinking around this second wave started to when Carmack made his announcement.
- bretticus 4y agoThis is Carmack’s resignation post for those curious https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/i-resigned-from-my-position-as-an-executive-consultant-for-vr-with-meta-my-inter/3467566940144465/ https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/i-resigned-fr...
- shapefrog 4y agoIt takes a certain kind of cold detatchment to hire 5,000-10,000 people to r&d and build the foundation of your next big thing - drain every ounce of life out of them then discard them on the heap a couple of years later.
- wincy 4y agoThe hundreds of thousands of dollars he paid every single one of them must have been just an awful experience for the people he “drained dry”.
- b112 4y agoIndeed. These people all have 2+ years of build, tooling, dev experience in this newly emerging field. They did valuable work, it just did not hit market. Anyone else in this space will be happy to snag them up.
- senttoschool 4y agoLike many tech companies during zero interest rates, they over hired and did not anticipate interest rates going up so fast. At least these employees probably made a ton of money.
- b112 4y agoThis has nothing to do with interest rates, none of these companies are borrowing to hire. And Meta, Amazon, Salesforce etc are only shedding excess pandemic hires. If you look at a graph of hires over a decade, the pandemic shows a huge blip up, and these layoffs correct that.
- nequo 4y agoIt does if they use their stock price as a benchmark, which they do if it is a part of their compensation. Higher interest rates push investors to sell their Facebook shares and buy bonds instead. This means that Facebook needs to earn higher profits in order to pull its stock price upwards. Low-IRR projects are eliminated and with them the people who worked on them.
- ulfw 4y agoThen why did he hire so many people if he wants to run a flat org at "closer to startup velocity (and cost)"? Wasn't he the one in charge since oh... I dunno... Day 1?
- edgyquant 4y agoPeople make mistakes
- deltree7 4y agoExactly! If you look at HN comments you'd think they all live this perfect life, never introduce bugs in their software, never make poor financial decisions (including mistakes of omissions). The whole comment section becomes a cesspool whenever Meta/Mark or Elon is discussed
- robertlagrant 4y agoHe must regret daily going for Metaverse. What a crazy move.
- meghan_rain 4y agoI love it when megacorps misinvest billions. Opens space for a competition that didn't.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gonzo41 4y agoIt's actually kind of amazing that there's not any real consequence to making that bad call. It sucked up a lot of energy, lots of people tried to stake and early adopter position in the metaverse and it turns out everyone just didn't want that. I think they could have made more money if they built games into facebook. At probably a fraction of the cost really.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoReminds me of Marks 'pivot to video' on facebook [0] https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/09/well-this-puts-a-nail-in-the-news-video-on-facebook-coffin/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/09/well-this-puts-a-nail-in-t...
- mbajkowski 4y agoI believe they tried to court game developers via Facebook platform at one point. I recall giving Civilization Network a shot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_World
- robertlagrant 4y ago> there's not any real consequence to making that bad call There is: they've spent a fortune of their money on building it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- galkk 4y agod) different set of roles are going to be cleaned up? According to rumors meta is flattening and requires many managers to switch to ic roles with mandatory coding/delivering. Could be a chance to clear the house there too. Also perf review results, won’t be surprised if not only individual perf was reviewed but whole teams/orgs. In general, I think, that Facebook (and rest of faang/ms/etc in similar proportions) now are building plans what/whom they need to cut off if they want to operate with 50k/35k/25k/15k total headcount.
- KaiserPro 4y ago> Mark wants to go all in AI instead of Metaverse I see no evidence of that. The recent announcements are at best a re-org, or worse a cleanup of three+ reorgs where FAIR and others were subsumed into RL-R. It is clear that The Meta leadership doesn't really understand what they are doing. The first cut I suggest was designed to send a message to investors that meta is "serious" about something. I assume that this second cut is because not enough people left of their own accord. However none of this is actually a change in strategy. Where are the product changes? where is the announcement of key priorities for the different Apps? are they going to start putting users first? or just add more shit into each app until something sticks? The key problem Meta has is that they only have one effective leader: zuck. Everyone else appears to be underwhelming. Boz: arrogance personified. None of the misteps in the last 4 years are ever his fault. It was market forces that meant that raybans failed, rather than releasing them before they were finished. the quest pro didn't sell, not boz's fault. The market wasnt ready for a capable device with absolutely no software support for the new features. Want to join your friend in a VR game? sure! just perform 15 clicks and wait 7 minutes. No not those clicks, no you need to press the hidden sub menu silly! Oh, no, remember you need to have an OS update first. 10 minute update tax! Mosseri: Pivoting Instagram to video, because tiktok. just push push push. Oh wait our cash cow users are pissed off, ok, roll back. "there was no way to forsee this problem" despite everyone telling them it was a horrid user experience. Blue app: Lets just push random shit into your stream, don't worry we'll roll out the user controls next half. Don't like the content? tough my metric is to get more shit in your feed, if you don't like it, its not my job to fix it, thats someone elses.
- elforce002 4y agoOn Instagram: they'll discontinue ig live shopping, which is at least some good news. Fb: I've been out of it and the reality is millennials and gen z won't be joining it. They know that. Their only bet is to lobby congress to ban tiktok.
- ChatGTP 4y agoInstagram has gotten to the point where I just have absolutely no interest to continue using it. Mostly it feeds me soft porn, and my friends have kind of posted the same things over and over, which has become kind of boring. Food pics, workout pics, whatever. It's gotten to the point where I'm just actually bored with the platform in general, not necessarily the content. Facebook, I just have zero interest in going anywhere near it, it's so, so, so boring.
- sanjiwatsuki 4y agoHR reasons are more common than you'd think. There's only so much HR and legal power to go around and it sometimes is easier to plan layoffs in multiple stages, rather than go for one big one.
- 2-718-281-828 4y agoNever attribute to [whatever] that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- jrs235 4y agoHoping one round, RTO, etc. would lead to more folks naturally leaving and not needing to do a second round (to save on severance and PR).
- Iolaum 4y agoCould it be that since Twitter hasn't collapsed yet people are trying to pull a Musk headcount-wise (albeit in a better executed manner) ?
- dao- 4y ago> Could it be that since Twitter hasn't collapsed yet As in it isn't done collapsing yet?
- wnkrshm 4y agoRome was collapsing for centuries, give it a few years.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bretticus 4y agoHope not. They’ve had several outages and high profile bugs. Also on the verge of bankruptcy.
- hello_moto 4y agoTheir revenue leaked badly and can't be patch.
- zpeti 4y agoD) with an organisation this size, it’s impossible to do the cuts once and for all the people you need to cut, because the communication and reporting lines will get completely disrupted. If they know they need to cut 20%, they can’t do that at once as the business would collapse. Doing 5% every quarter means there’s time to absorb the changes.
- gwbas1c 4y agoBack in 2009-2010, when Facebook was going gangbusters, I used to joke that "Facebook is the new AOL." Now Facebook is the old AOL.
- pilarphosol 4y agoI think it’s hilarious that they went and changed their name to their worst idea. The term “metaverse” comes from Snow Crash, which is a dystopia. They would know this if they actually read.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI like it when companies just come out and wear "evil" on their sleeve. Like Palantir. Better than when they try to hide it, anyway.
- jayd16 4y agoSnow Crash is a a dystopia because of hyper capitalism not because of the metaverse. It's like worrying about space travel because 2001 had a runaway AI.
- yifanl 4y agoThe metaverse did empower malicious advertisements to selectively target people (and put them in a coma) in Snow Crash iirc, so maybe it's really just a pivot deeper into that side of adtech.
- pilarphosol 4y agoTrue, but the reason there was so much demand to live in the metaverse is that the real world was so odious.
- r00fus 4y agoMark loved Snow Crash. He does actually read. That's the really sad part.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
- marcosdumay 4y agoThere's some unwritten rule that management can't layoff more than ~10% of the people at a single time. Honestly, it's such an strange mix of the Chersteton's fence and scream testing that I can't begin to understand the rationale.
- giobox 4y agoCurious to see if the 2nd phase applies more to countries they operate in that don't have "at will employment" style legislation, it might go some way to explaining the two phases. That would fit into your point b). IIRC, the first set of layoffs largely affected the US a lot more than Europe - its a much more involved legal process generally to perform layoffs in cities like London vs their US offices and often can't be done as quickly.
- tonymet 4y agoThe first round is low hanging fruit and the second round is done after restructuring where more targeted cuts need to be made.