5 ms·

b) 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

b) 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 ago
it 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 ago
  This 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 ago
It 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Indeed. 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 ago
  Like 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      It 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.
      - dangwhy 4y ago
        > interest rates push investors to sell their Facebook shares and buy bonds instead. Wouldnt the stock price drop with people selling the stock. That didn't happen with meta with interest rate hikes.
        nequo 4y ago
        You’re right, it should, unless Facebook counterbalanced the hikes with positive news during those days/weeks.
    - dboreham 4y ago
      > This has nothing to do with interest rates, none of these companies are borrowing to hire. The interest rate connection is that investors buy the company stock (driving the price up beyond what's reasonable given the underlying business health), because the alternative fix rate instruments offer negative return.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - brokencode 4y ago
    HN is probably not the best audience for this message. But I obviously disagree. People don’t become doctors because it’s insanely hard, stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. What we need there is not more money, as doctors also have high salaries already, but a reform in the system to make it more appealing to do the work. I’m not sure what you mean by “more engineers, more visionaries”. Are workers at big tech companies not engineers? And how does reducing somebody’s salary make them a visionary? More likely is that somebody makes a lot of money in a big tech company then can afford to quit their job and start their own company. Aka, they can become a “visionary”, like you suggest.
    - chasd00 4y ago
      > Are workers at big tech companies not engineers? that's actually a very controversial question and has been debated my whole code-writing career ( 26 years so far ).
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    > plus big tech wages going down ? It is a clear win-win. lol wut. also, what website are you posting on?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  While I agree with your sentiment, this is a nasty business, I would like to think we also all know the game now. Do people go to work at Facebook[1], Amazon, etc., expecting to still be working there long enough to see their kids graduate and go off to college? [1] I'm still not going to call it "Meta" any more than I am going to call "Star Wars" "Star Wars IV: New Hope".
  - muro 4y ago
    > Do people go to work at Facebook[1], Amazon, etc., expecting to still be working there long enough to see their kids graduate and go off to college? Sure, why not?
    - megaman8 4y ago
      most people at these companies don't last very long. if you doubt that, just take a look at the average person's linkedIn or resume. You'll see the average tenure at a tech company is about 2 to 3 years.
      - muro 4y ago
        While many people do job-hopping because they might get more money etc., others value stability, short commute, a project they like, their colleagues and more money is not as enticing. Even others found a cushy job they don't want to lose - many reasons to stay.
      - blsapologist42 4y ago
        Maybe in the boom times. Now with the market attrition rates are more in line with 6-10 yr stints.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    The alternative for many would have been something closer to a startup. In the case of Oculus - employees probably did quite nicely out of the company being aquired by facebook (?). I guess if you are working on greenfields tech - one should avoid the big tech co. You have no real ownership of the innovaton and nobody is going to come along and buy you out if it goes well.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So, if you know you’re doing research on a new product that as far from a sure bet, don’t you have enough self awareness to save a fair amount of your outsized Facebook compensation, sell your RSUs as soon as they vest and diversify and be ready to interview? Or am I just old and not naive and start doing the same thing they do I got my first check + prorated sign on bonus when I was hired at BigTech almost 3 years ago?
ulfw 4y ago
Then 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 ago
  People make mistakes
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Exactly! 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

zmmmmm 4y ago

it 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 ago
This 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 ago

It 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Indeed. 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 ago
Like 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 ago
  This 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 ago
    It 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.
    - dangwhy 4y ago
      > interest rates push investors to sell their Facebook shares and buy bonds instead. Wouldnt the stock price drop with people selling the stock. That didn't happen with meta with interest rate hikes.
      - nequo 4y ago
        You’re right, it should, unless Facebook counterbalanced the hikes with positive news during those days/weeks.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    > This has nothing to do with interest rates, none of these companies are borrowing to hire. The interest rate connection is that investors buy the company stock (driving the price up beyond what's reasonable given the underlying business health), because the alternative fix rate instruments offer negative return.
4gotunameagain 4y ago
[flagged]
- brokencode 4y ago
  HN is probably not the best audience for this message. But I obviously disagree. People don’t become doctors because it’s insanely hard, stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. What we need there is not more money, as doctors also have high salaries already, but a reform in the system to make it more appealing to do the work. I’m not sure what you mean by “more engineers, more visionaries”. Are workers at big tech companies not engineers? And how does reducing somebody’s salary make them a visionary? More likely is that somebody makes a lot of money in a big tech company then can afford to quit their job and start their own company. Aka, they can become a “visionary”, like you suggest.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    > Are workers at big tech companies not engineers? that's actually a very controversial question and has been debated my whole code-writing career ( 26 years so far ).
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > plus big tech wages going down ? It is a clear win-win. lol wut. also, what website are you posting on?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
JKCalhoun 4y ago
While I agree with your sentiment, this is a nasty business, I would like to think we also all know the game now. Do people go to work at Facebook[1], Amazon, etc., expecting to still be working there long enough to see their kids graduate and go off to college? [1] I'm still not going to call it "Meta" any more than I am going to call "Star Wars" "Star Wars IV: New Hope".
- muro 4y ago
  > Do people go to work at Facebook[1], Amazon, etc., expecting to still be working there long enough to see their kids graduate and go off to college? Sure, why not?
  - megaman8 4y ago
    most people at these companies don't last very long. if you doubt that, just take a look at the average person's linkedIn or resume. You'll see the average tenure at a tech company is about 2 to 3 years.
    - muro 4y ago
      While many people do job-hopping because they might get more money etc., others value stability, short commute, a project they like, their colleagues and more money is not as enticing. Even others found a cushy job they don't want to lose - many reasons to stay.
    - blsapologist42 4y ago
      Maybe in the boom times. Now with the market attrition rates are more in line with 6-10 yr stints.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  The alternative for many would have been something closer to a startup. In the case of Oculus - employees probably did quite nicely out of the company being aquired by facebook (?). I guess if you are working on greenfields tech - one should avoid the big tech co. You have no real ownership of the innovaton and nobody is going to come along and buy you out if it goes well.
scarface74 4y ago
So, if you know you’re doing research on a new product that as far from a sure bet, don’t you have enough self awareness to save a fair amount of your outsized Facebook compensation, sell your RSUs as soon as they vest and diversify and be ready to interview? Or am I just old and not naive and start doing the same thing they do I got my first check + prorated sign on bonus when I was hired at BigTech almost 3 years ago?

ulfw 4y ago

Then 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 ago
People make mistakes
- deltree7 4y ago
  Exactly! 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