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Free advice to future managers: You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the co

Free advice to future managers: You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting. Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.

brap 4y ago
The novel isn't for employees, it's for investors
- avrionov 4y ago
  Correct. The stock is up 5% this morning.
  - yurishimo 4y ago
    Stock always goes up after layoffs. Hell, the stock goes up after _rumors_ about layoffs.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      So, if you approach 0 employees asymptotically, the stock will approach ∞.
      - mywittyname 4y ago
        I sincerely hope this new thesis you've unleashed on the world is called the DeathArrow in business schools across the world.
      - Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
        give man a Nobel
      - otikik 4y ago
        Let me guess. You work in crypto.
      - sirsinsalot 4y ago
        Limitless growth
      - brwck 4y ago
        Why stop a 0? If we can have negative interest rates, why not negative employment? Make employees pay you to work for them.
        ghaff 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure that's a thing with certain types of internships.
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        Revenue (or profit) per employee is always the metric to use, where employee >= 1, since there is no use making 0.01 cents if there are 0 employees. WhatsApp famously had ~50 employees for ~$16 billion in acquisition price.
        blsapologist42 4y ago
        What was their revenue though?
        satvikpendem 4y ago
        Who knows / cares? Their product is the stock itself that was then sold to the acquirer. The show Silicon Valley has a great parody of this fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM
- testfoobar 4y ago
  And the press. You can assume that internal emails like this are leaked.
  - Jagerbizzle 4y ago
    It's publicly posted on fb.com
    - capableweb 4y ago
      After sharing it internally. Probably posted on fb.com as they know it would just leak otherwise, and the memo is written with the mindset of it being public regardless.
paganel 4y ago
> who are probably still very much in demand Honest question, but are they? And, just as important, is anyone other than a FAANG company willing to pay them the same high comps right at this moment? I can see a high-need-for-people/high-comp scenario still possible in some parts of finance, but with these recent events I'm not so sure anymore. I'm also sure that right now there's a high demand for people in anything related to MIC/the war industry, but I don't think they can provide the same high comps as FAANGs do, unless one choose to go the contractor route (which also comes with its pluses and minuses).
- hylaride 4y ago
  Yes. At the moment, there very much is a shortage of qualified tech workers still. The market for them is now more "really hot" than "white hot".
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    No. Only niche skills. Python and basic web dev is becoming common place. Supply given boot camps and lack of credentialism and the ease of learning software dev has increased by a lot. These layoffs don't happen in a really hot market.
    - omginternets 4y ago
      Boot camps don’t qualify as supply, they qualify as noise. People who can actually engineer using Python are rare enough that they remain well-paid.
      - HervalFreire 4y ago
        They do qualify. Boot camps generate a lot of noise but there is no doubt that out of that noise there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin. Not seeing this is denying reality. People who can actually engineer in python is becoming more and more common place.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
That’s the thing; the A players are still in demand (even Z players like me are still getting contacted for roles), and I wonder if sending this message out like this is a huge gamble on Meta’s part. If I were there I’d be seriously considering a less volatile environment. If I were an A player, I’d be able to do so even easier and potentially find more meaningful work. This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this. With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  > This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this. That may be intentional. I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff. Meta is still huge and pays good money. They can handle a huge level of attrition and still have enough "A players" left over to work on the thing that truly require that level of operation. > With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are. Fully agree on this. At that scope, it's broad cuts with a lot of meat going with the fat.
  - CountSessine 4y ago
    I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff This is a terrible idea, though. It's always the desirable employees that have options that leave an environment like this, and it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay. I've seen this so many times in my career. The A players will stay because they're attached to the things they've created, but the B players will leave and you're left with lots of C players. In the long run its cheaper to lay off people.
    - watwut 4y ago
      People who want to leave and have options, will consider those options either way. There is no way for meta to force them to stay. Even if meta announced layoffs with all the list of names, following months many who want will leave. Pretty much every layoff is followed by people leaving voluntary. Some over bad feelings of what happened, some because their friends are away so why not and some dont like new position. But they will be leaving. > it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay. Meh. People stay for many reasons. It is not always "not having options". It is fairly often "I actually want to stay despite layoff". And again, there is no way to force people to stay. Confident people will be leaving either way.
IMTDb 4y ago
> will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. As other have said: is there such a high demand right now ? And if you know and feel that you are an "A" player; and so far you have seen "C" players getting laid off, you might actually feel that the average level of the people you interact with increases which makes you want to stay more.
- hylaride 4y ago
  It's not white hot like it was 1-3 years ago, but if you're qualified and experienced, yes there very much is still demand from non-FAANG companies.
  - dangwhy 4y ago
    taking 50% paycut isn't easy.
    - hylaride 4y ago
      The way FAANG stocks have performed, you've already taken that if you work for one considering how much of their total comp tended to be RSUs (with the exception of apple).
      - dangwhy 4y ago
        Facebook gave out refreshers and bonuses even this review cycle.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    While that might be true: a) the technical challenges at these large tech companies are probably way more interesting b) compensation is very likely better c) you are working with many many more peers who are super talented
    - dx034 4y ago
      Aren't technical challenges at smaller companies usually much more interesting? Pay is worse, but smaller companies usually offer much more freedom to implement your ideas and shape the company.
dangwhy 4y ago
> cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. Vast majority won't find jobs that are as well paying as facebook. FB is a leader in tech salaries which gives them the leverage to announce such a thing without losing people. People don't want to take paycuts and go somewhere thats also doing layoffs.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  FB pay at this point is highly dependent on when your RSU basis was set, no? If you joined from 9/2020 to 1/2022, you’ve taken a serious pay cut versus your nominal offer. Unless there have been adjustments that I haven’t read about?
  - dangwhy 4y ago
    Refreshers and bonuses weren't paused during this period.
  - fatnoah 4y ago
    For someone who joined at the peak of September 2021, let's assume an L6 offer of $240k + 20% bonus + $1.1M in joining stock over four years. With no stock movement and meeting expectations, they'd make $298k cash + $275k stock, for a total of $563k. Now, with that stock down by 50% (ish) as of today, they're total compensation would be $436k. That's still a serious chunk of change, and while a $138k drop in compensation is nothing to sneeze at, they'll also be getting a new grant of $220k/4 years this month(ish), and every year hereafter, bringing their 2023 compensation almost back to $500k if the stock market doesn't move. So yes, it's a serious pay cut, but it's still amazing pay. Now, if they were bullish on the market, then it might make sense to try to move to another company that can come up with a 7-figure joining bonus and ride that appreciation to new stock heights.
    - bradleyjg 4y ago
      Yes, I agree with the GP’s main point that FB is still near or at top of market and that matters quite a bit more than HN sometimes gives it credit for. Just wanted to clarify that it’s not quite what it was. Thanks for adding numbers.
dsr_ 4y ago
The old joke is: Letter 1: Blame previous management. Letter 2: Announce a reorg/layoffs. Letter 3: Tell your successor to write three letters...
- rchaud 4y ago
  Top brass doesn't get fired anymore, no need for the 3rd letter these days.
  - thomasjudge 4y ago
    Greg Becker would like a word
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    In this case, the top brass owns more than 50% of voting rights, so no one can fire them.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      But since he's also a shareholder, it's in his own interest to self fire himself.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
andsoitis 4y ago
> writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting. Employees ask for transparency. This is what transparency looks like...
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Its not transparency, it’s marketing and guessing the future.
  - lazide 4y ago
    What do you think most upper management is exactly?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > Its not transparency, it’s marketing and guessing the future. You are wrong. During the last round of layoffs, employees asked to hear about upcoming plans before they happen. Mark Zuckerberg is literally responding to that request.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  [flagged]
duxup 4y ago
I worked at a company where the VPs loved to write long company wide emails. One time HR wrote "Why working at <insert this company name> is great Part 1". (If you write part 1 and part 2 corporate emails you're already doing email wrong.) They did a layoff between the time Part 1 was sent and Part 2 was sent. The scale of absurdity was difficult to measure with that one. I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around". He was so right. Scored a lot of points there, never heard an executive of a large company say that so bluntly before.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around". Didn't the executives employ any anti-takeover measures?
  - vishnugupta 4y ago
    A good skill execs have is to negotiate extremely lucrative severance terms and have it written in their employment agreements.
    - sklargh 4y ago
      In the US a material perquisite of senior management roles are negotiable severance terms. Sad really.
      - DeathArrow 4y ago
        So, if you are fired from enough workplaces for not working enough you get rich and don't have to work. :)
    - 4y ago
s1k3 4y ago
Managers write novels because employees complain about lack of transparency and communication. I promise you no manager wants to write some novel about how layoffs are good for company, but they just or they get skewered for not communicating.
- freeone3000 4y ago
  Saying more words isn’t communicating. In this situation, employees would like to be able to prepare for the layoffs ahead of time, know their jobs are safe (or not), and see what they can change. Saying a bunch of stuff about the future outlook of the company being bright feels like a lie when that’s the same email that got sent after the last round, three months ago
awill 4y ago
Where are they going to go? The market isn't good right now. Not many places that are hiring can give an offer that matches a FAANG
- newaccount2023 4y ago
  right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they? HN seems to think it is the birthright of a good dev to get a $450k salary...just "because" look at it from the other side of the table...you have 300 great resumes for a position...why do you have to offer a premium salary? counterpoint: these salaries were a blip and will never return in nominal form (let alone inflation adjusted) for many devs ever again
  - awill 4y ago
    Right. But the point is, if you're already at a FAANG earning a huge salary, and you don't know if you're going to get laid off, you can either a) wait and hope for the best, or b) leave and get a job at a lower salary. I think most would choose a).
  - vkou 4y ago
    > right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they? Everyone who still has a job with them is still getting 'megabucks'. They, for the most part, aren't hiring, though.
pdntspa 4y ago
The lack of self-awareness in corporate communications is suffocating, when instead it should be suffocating the folks who wrote these emails
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. I imagine the vast majority of their ultra top-tier talent has left already unless Meta gave them gigantic bonuses. The stock is down ~40% from where a lot of their RSUs were granted - more than 50% of their pay comes from those grants. They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole.
- ben7799 4y ago
  This is a huge factor! In my experience having a whole bunch of stock can be a really powerful anchor to keep you in place at your job even if you're not 100% happy. If the stock tanks that vaporizes really quickly.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole. But other FAANGS are not hiring. So where it's somewhere unless they planned to start their own businesses?
  - kanyethegreat 4y ago
    Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m also curious where these people are going to earn massive comp.
  - jasonladuke0311 4y ago
    > But other FAANGS are not hiring. They are if you’re talented enough.
    - johntiger1 4y ago
      This is a toxic mentality; getting hired at FAANG has very little to do with your "talent"
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Every time there is a layoff announcement, I feel like half the comments are nitpicking over the language. It was too long, it was too short, language was too conciliatory, not conciliatory enough, yada yada. We get it. Managers are people too, they're not perfect. At this point, as an employee, I'd just ignore everything that was said (I know it's probably been wordsmithed to death anyway trying to find the right balance for all the various stakeholders), and only focus on the actions: are people treated fairly and with respect, both for those leaving and those remaining.
- draw_down 4y ago
  “The medium is the message.” Yes, the nitpicking over language is silly. In some cases, actually sort of pathetic. It is true that these messages can be overwrought and whatever else, but it literally doesn’t matter what the content is besides the fact that a layoff is happening. If you tell me I’m laid off with a smile or with a middle finger makes no difference, I’m still laid off.
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Yeah, but communication is a core function of their job. I write code - that's my core function. People should get on my case if there are bugs in it.
- batmaniam 4y ago
  Layoffs are not something any employees can control. It's gonna happen or it's not. That's it. Without proper collective power, the only thing we can do is worry. You're right in that language doesn't matter. Hell even the delivery of the message doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the severance or layoff package. That's the real meat. There should be a mandatory law that publishes all layoff packages so that everyone can see if they're getting a fair deal or not.
jasondigitized 4y ago
This "transparency" is a shrewd play to drive higher productivity through a Lord of the Flies work environment.
foobiekr 4y ago
Every time a layoff is discussed, people talk about how the A players are going to leave. Seemingly, people do not understand that the A players could have easily left the whole time but are taken care of - already - so they haven’t. It is not that rare for critical employees to get grants as part of the layoff execution in a pre-emotive action, and now that I’m older I will note that I’ve been on the planning side of layoffs and this is fairly commonplace.
- thaanpaa 4y ago
  Not sure if it's true in Meta's case (and almost certainly not Twitter's), but from what I've heard, they usually tell the key people that they are safe a day before.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  +1, there are some quite juvenile sentiments about employment evident in this thread. If a company wants someone to stay they'll try very hard to make that happen. Not every employee is treated equally.
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    Exactly. When I was younger I was shocked to learn that during an LR companies would “over” cut in order to fund retention for critical people. You’re laying off 7%? This is a good time to free up some additional opex, so just add a few heads above target in order to free opex to comp important people. You won’t get that 7% back but overage you do, usually.
- badpun 4y ago
  Plenty of A players might be assigned to pointless projects which could be axed wholesale.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    So "A Player" is on a pointless project not providing value to the company gets axed. The value to the company is losing with that "A Player" is nothing because the project they're working on is pointless. These companies could take a more twitter like "print out your code" or global stack ranking to lay people off but i don't think it dodge the problem people describe. The "A Player" could still be mad that all their coworkers got fired and/or the "pointless project" they enjoyed working on got axed and still leave. You just get the add cost, drama, and blow-back (see twitter) that a performance based firing would entail and probably open yourself up to lawsuits (IANAL) if you don't have an adequate paper trail for those performance based filings.
toddmorey 4y ago
Exactly. My first thought was how dystopian it is to start an email about layoffs during the "year of efficiency" with how your company is "building the future of human connection".
noduerme 4y ago
Everything after the first section is definitely written by an LLM, and not one named Zuckerberg.
that_guy_iain 4y ago
> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. Part of the plan is that lots of people leave on their own along with the 10k. For me, the real question is, how many of the A players can afford to leave? Salaries have to be declining many of the top payers have hiring freezes. It seems like even though they're in high demand will they be able to demand the same pay? And if they can't how many are willing to take the jump and leave for less money? They're called golden handcuffs for a reason.
- blsapologist42 4y ago
  From what I've heard attrition is very low right now. Which makes sense... why leave when you might get paid four months of salary if you are laid off instead.
usrusr 4y ago
> and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere I really don't believe that it's a given that Meta still needs them: the entire org was designed for "innovation", and that has certainly been the right call back in the day. E.g. back when they were still on the edge between buying and competing with whatsapp and instagramm on the product level. But Meta products have been beyond "salvation by innovation" for almost a decade now, what they need to maximize shareholder value is the cheapest setup to keep value extraction up and running for as long as the brands still do their thing. The innovation game is over for them, because the same brand effect that saves the platforms from dying immediately also taints anything Meta buys or starts. Even if Meta had a "Toktik" that had feature equivalency with Tiktok without even a microsecond latency, it would still be stillborn because people just don't want yet another Meta product in their lives (even to the point where they'd rather have a CCP product in their lives, brand awareness isn't exactly a field where logic applies). These days Meta is in the position comparable to that of a single-field oil extraction company that has no hope for getting claims on any other fields and that has its existing field already fully prospected and tapped. That field is far from empty yet, but they only need people to keep the pumps running, no prospectors, no drillers, no acquisition strategists. Those Meta employees that have been traditionally considered "A players" they wouldn't want to lose and that might actually have been paid absurd sums only to keep them from innovating for the competition are all in the "prospectors, drillers, strategists" group and those have exactly zero value for the janitorial task of keeping the pumps running (edit: more likely negative value, not zero). (I know, this almost sounds as if I was saying that Musk's Twitter strategy of burning down the house and then trying to macguyver something useful from the rubble was smart, I'm a bit surprised myself. I guess I do think that the aggressive downsizing would have been the rational thing for Twitter to do, but certainly not as a "step 2" after "step 1: throw 44 billion at previous owners". In hindsight, waiting for 44 billion to show up has certainly been much better for previous Twitter owners than doing the downsizing themselves)
l1silver 4y ago
What if your A players are tired of carrying the load for the B and C players and cherish this news?
vishnugupta 4y ago
For once, as someone with 0 stake in this whole affair, I quite like he's explicitly spelt out the details he has. Specifically the sections "Leaner is better", and "Flatter is faster". Other sections are quite relevant and well written IMO. Also, reading between the lines, Metaverse gets mentioned just twice. I guess they are going to go slow on that? And Oh, "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" tells me WFH at Meta will be a thing of the past. Edit: More content.
blincoln 4y ago
I agree that the press release is way too long. I'd add one more specific recommendation for anyone who ends up in a leadership role: If you're ever in a situation where you need to lay off or otherwise end your relationship with employees, contractors, etc., avoid using terms like "garbage collect[ion]" in the press release, even if you think it's in a section that's not directly about the people you're letting go.
shepardrtc 4y ago
The fault of this lies in upper management. They're getting paid a lot of money to foresee these sorts of things and to plan for them. Hiring like crazy isn't planning, its just doing bare minimum to make it look like you're doing something. But this is also endemic to the Meta org: you can only rise up if you hire enough people below you. And the fault for that ridiculous requirement lies in Zuckerberg. Why are none of the upper management accepting that THEY failed? They should be laid off along with the workers. Including Zuckerberg.
deltree7 4y ago
There are two kinds of people * People who have built companies from 0 to $Trillion (making a lot of employees incredibly wealthy) * ^^ People who give free advice on the internet ^^
dcow 4y ago
Why is the immediate response to criticize? Every single time I've seen layoffs discussed people always ask why it can't feel like more of a conversation and less like a bandaid getting ripped off (because it sucks to be part of the bandaid). Employees want to be included in the conversation. It seems that's exactly what is being done here. How is that insulting?! I mean we also hear the traditional rationale for why you can't announce layoffs in advance but it doesn't seem absurd to try it since there seems to be remarkably little data on the subject. Further, if you're considering letting 10k people go, I don't see how it's bad to have the loose ones leave of their own volition. I actually liked the tone and detail of this post. It certainly seems Meta is preparing to fix more than "100% a management failure"...
twblalock 4y ago
This isn't just an internal email, it's a press release. Everyone knows that if it was just an internal email someone would leak it, so they are writing it knowing that the public will see it.
darth_avocado 4y ago
> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. That may be the plan. There are two benefits of this: more than 10000 people leave your company, but you don’t have to pay severance to them. And second, A players are compensated well and a layoff forces you to pay them hefty severances. If you think your A players do not contribute as much as they are getting paid, this is a way to push them out without paying that extra cash.
dgs_sgd 4y ago
Conversely, if you're an A player you may be ecstatic in believing the company is finally getting back on track, and therefore want to stay. Something similar happened when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He cancelled ~70% of the product roadmap and the engineers were thrilled that the company finally returned to a coherent vision.
nothrowaways 4y ago
Is "a player" an internal rank?
blsapologist42 4y ago
I'm sure Zuck really appreciates the advice of a random HN commenter. It's not like he has experience running one of the world's largest companies or anything.

brap 4y ago

The novel isn't for employees, it's for investors

avrionov 4y ago
Correct. The stock is up 5% this morning.
- yurishimo 4y ago
  Stock always goes up after layoffs. Hell, the stock goes up after _rumors_ about layoffs.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    So, if you approach 0 employees asymptotically, the stock will approach ∞.
    - mywittyname 4y ago
      I sincerely hope this new thesis you've unleashed on the world is called the DeathArrow in business schools across the world.
    - Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
      give man a Nobel
    - otikik 4y ago
      Let me guess. You work in crypto.
    - sirsinsalot 4y ago
      Limitless growth
    - brwck 4y ago
      Why stop a 0? If we can have negative interest rates, why not negative employment? Make employees pay you to work for them.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure that's a thing with certain types of internships.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Revenue (or profit) per employee is always the metric to use, where employee >= 1, since there is no use making 0.01 cents if there are 0 employees. WhatsApp famously had ~50 employees for ~$16 billion in acquisition price.
      - blsapologist42 4y ago
        What was their revenue though?
        satvikpendem 4y ago
        Who knows / cares? Their product is the stock itself that was then sold to the acquirer. The show Silicon Valley has a great parody of this fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM
testfoobar 4y ago
And the press. You can assume that internal emails like this are leaked.
- Jagerbizzle 4y ago
  It's publicly posted on fb.com
  - capableweb 4y ago
    After sharing it internally. Probably posted on fb.com as they know it would just leak otherwise, and the memo is written with the mindset of it being public regardless.

paganel 4y ago

> who are probably still very much in demand Honest question, but are they? And, just as important, is anyone other than a FAANG company willing to pay them the same high comps right at this moment? I can see a high-need-for-people/high-comp scenario still possible in some parts of finance, but with these recent events I'm not so sure anymore. I'm also sure that right now there's a high demand for people in anything related to MIC/the war industry, but I don't think they can provide the same high comps as FAANGs do, unless one choose to go the contractor route (which also comes with its pluses and minuses).

hylaride 4y ago
Yes. At the moment, there very much is a shortage of qualified tech workers still. The market for them is now more "really hot" than "white hot".
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  No. Only niche skills. Python and basic web dev is becoming common place. Supply given boot camps and lack of credentialism and the ease of learning software dev has increased by a lot. These layoffs don't happen in a really hot market.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    Boot camps don’t qualify as supply, they qualify as noise. People who can actually engineer using Python are rare enough that they remain well-paid.
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      They do qualify. Boot camps generate a lot of noise but there is no doubt that out of that noise there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin. Not seeing this is denying reality. People who can actually engineer in python is becoming more and more common place.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

That’s the thing; the A players are still in demand (even Z players like me are still getting contacted for roles), and I wonder if sending this message out like this is a huge gamble on Meta’s part. If I were there I’d be seriously considering a less volatile environment. If I were an A player, I’d be able to do so even easier and potentially find more meaningful work. This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this. With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.

fatnoah 4y ago
> This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this. That may be intentional. I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff. Meta is still huge and pays good money. They can handle a huge level of attrition and still have enough "A players" left over to work on the thing that truly require that level of operation. > With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are. Fully agree on this. At that scope, it's broad cuts with a lot of meat going with the fat.
- CountSessine 4y ago
  I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff This is a terrible idea, though. It's always the desirable employees that have options that leave an environment like this, and it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay. I've seen this so many times in my career. The A players will stay because they're attached to the things they've created, but the B players will leave and you're left with lots of C players. In the long run its cheaper to lay off people.
  - watwut 4y ago
    People who want to leave and have options, will consider those options either way. There is no way for meta to force them to stay. Even if meta announced layoffs with all the list of names, following months many who want will leave. Pretty much every layoff is followed by people leaving voluntary. Some over bad feelings of what happened, some because their friends are away so why not and some dont like new position. But they will be leaving. > it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay. Meh. People stay for many reasons. It is not always "not having options". It is fairly often "I actually want to stay despite layoff". And again, there is no way to force people to stay. Confident people will be leaving either way.

IMTDb 4y ago

> will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. As other have said: is there such a high demand right now ? And if you know and feel that you are an "A" player; and so far you have seen "C" players getting laid off, you might actually feel that the average level of the people you interact with increases which makes you want to stay more.

hylaride 4y ago
It's not white hot like it was 1-3 years ago, but if you're qualified and experienced, yes there very much is still demand from non-FAANG companies.
- dangwhy 4y ago
  taking 50% paycut isn't easy.
  - hylaride 4y ago
    The way FAANG stocks have performed, you've already taken that if you work for one considering how much of their total comp tended to be RSUs (with the exception of apple).
    - dangwhy 4y ago
      Facebook gave out refreshers and bonuses even this review cycle.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  While that might be true: a) the technical challenges at these large tech companies are probably way more interesting b) compensation is very likely better c) you are working with many many more peers who are super talented
  - dx034 4y ago
    Aren't technical challenges at smaller companies usually much more interesting? Pay is worse, but smaller companies usually offer much more freedom to implement your ideas and shape the company.

dangwhy 4y ago

> cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. Vast majority won't find jobs that are as well paying as facebook. FB is a leader in tech salaries which gives them the leverage to announce such a thing without losing people. People don't want to take paycuts and go somewhere thats also doing layoffs.

bradleyjg 4y ago
FB pay at this point is highly dependent on when your RSU basis was set, no? If you joined from 9/2020 to 1/2022, you’ve taken a serious pay cut versus your nominal offer. Unless there have been adjustments that I haven’t read about?
- dangwhy 4y ago
  Refreshers and bonuses weren't paused during this period.
- fatnoah 4y ago
  For someone who joined at the peak of September 2021, let's assume an L6 offer of $240k + 20% bonus + $1.1M in joining stock over four years. With no stock movement and meeting expectations, they'd make $298k cash + $275k stock, for a total of $563k. Now, with that stock down by 50% (ish) as of today, they're total compensation would be $436k. That's still a serious chunk of change, and while a $138k drop in compensation is nothing to sneeze at, they'll also be getting a new grant of $220k/4 years this month(ish), and every year hereafter, bringing their 2023 compensation almost back to $500k if the stock market doesn't move. So yes, it's a serious pay cut, but it's still amazing pay. Now, if they were bullish on the market, then it might make sense to try to move to another company that can come up with a 7-figure joining bonus and ride that appreciation to new stock heights.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    Yes, I agree with the GP’s main point that FB is still near or at top of market and that matters quite a bit more than HN sometimes gives it credit for. Just wanted to clarify that it’s not quite what it was. Thanks for adding numbers.

dsr_ 4y ago

The old joke is: Letter 1: Blame previous management. Letter 2: Announce a reorg/layoffs. Letter 3: Tell your successor to write three letters...

rchaud 4y ago
Top brass doesn't get fired anymore, no need for the 3rd letter these days.
- thomasjudge 4y ago
  Greg Becker would like a word
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  In this case, the top brass owns more than 50% of voting rights, so no one can fire them.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    But since he's also a shareholder, it's in his own interest to self fire himself.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

andsoitis 4y ago

> writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting. Employees ask for transparency. This is what transparency looks like...

vlunkr 4y ago
Its not transparency, it’s marketing and guessing the future.
- lazide 4y ago
  What do you think most upper management is exactly?
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > Its not transparency, it’s marketing and guessing the future. You are wrong. During the last round of layoffs, employees asked to hear about upcoming plans before they happen. Mark Zuckerberg is literally responding to that request.
shapefrog 4y ago
[flagged]

duxup 4y ago

I worked at a company where the VPs loved to write long company wide emails. One time HR wrote "Why working at <insert this company name> is great Part 1". (If you write part 1 and part 2 corporate emails you're already doing email wrong.) They did a layoff between the time Part 1 was sent and Part 2 was sent. The scale of absurdity was difficult to measure with that one. I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around". He was so right. Scored a lot of points there, never heard an executive of a large company say that so bluntly before.

DeathArrow 4y ago
>I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around". Didn't the executives employ any anti-takeover measures?
- vishnugupta 4y ago
  A good skill execs have is to negotiate extremely lucrative severance terms and have it written in their employment agreements.
  - sklargh 4y ago
    In the US a material perquisite of senior management roles are negotiable severance terms. Sad really.
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
      So, if you are fired from enough workplaces for not working enough you get rich and don't have to work. :)
  - 4y ago

s1k3 4y ago

Managers write novels because employees complain about lack of transparency and communication. I promise you no manager wants to write some novel about how layoffs are good for company, but they just or they get skewered for not communicating.

freeone3000 4y ago
Saying more words isn’t communicating. In this situation, employees would like to be able to prepare for the layoffs ahead of time, know their jobs are safe (or not), and see what they can change. Saying a bunch of stuff about the future outlook of the company being bright feels like a lie when that’s the same email that got sent after the last round, three months ago

awill 4y ago

Where are they going to go? The market isn't good right now. Not many places that are hiring can give an offer that matches a FAANG

newaccount2023 4y ago
right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they? HN seems to think it is the birthright of a good dev to get a $450k salary...just "because" look at it from the other side of the table...you have 300 great resumes for a position...why do you have to offer a premium salary? counterpoint: these salaries were a blip and will never return in nominal form (let alone inflation adjusted) for many devs ever again
- awill 4y ago
  Right. But the point is, if you're already at a FAANG earning a huge salary, and you don't know if you're going to get laid off, you can either a) wait and hope for the best, or b) leave and get a job at a lower salary. I think most would choose a).
- vkou 4y ago
  > right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they? Everyone who still has a job with them is still getting 'megabucks'. They, for the most part, aren't hiring, though.

pdntspa 4y ago

The lack of self-awareness in corporate communications is suffocating, when instead it should be suffocating the folks who wrote these emails

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

> This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. I imagine the vast majority of their ultra top-tier talent has left already unless Meta gave them gigantic bonuses. The stock is down ~40% from where a lot of their RSUs were granted - more than 50% of their pay comes from those grants. They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole.

ben7799 4y ago
This is a huge factor! In my experience having a whole bunch of stock can be a really powerful anchor to keep you in place at your job even if you're not 100% happy. If the stock tanks that vaporizes really quickly.
DeathArrow 4y ago
>They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole. But other FAANGS are not hiring. So where it's somewhere unless they planned to start their own businesses?
- kanyethegreat 4y ago
  Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m also curious where these people are going to earn massive comp.
- jasonladuke0311 4y ago
  > But other FAANGS are not hiring. They are if you’re talented enough.
  - johntiger1 4y ago
    This is a toxic mentality; getting hired at FAANG has very little to do with your "talent"

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Every time there is a layoff announcement, I feel like half the comments are nitpicking over the language. It was too long, it was too short, language was too conciliatory, not conciliatory enough, yada yada. We get it. Managers are people too, they're not perfect. At this point, as an employee, I'd just ignore everything that was said (I know it's probably been wordsmithed to death anyway trying to find the right balance for all the various stakeholders), and only focus on the actions: are people treated fairly and with respect, both for those leaving and those remaining.

draw_down 4y ago
“The medium is the message.” Yes, the nitpicking over language is silly. In some cases, actually sort of pathetic. It is true that these messages can be overwrought and whatever else, but it literally doesn’t matter what the content is besides the fact that a layoff is happening. If you tell me I’m laid off with a smile or with a middle finger makes no difference, I’m still laid off.
lr4444lr 4y ago
Yeah, but communication is a core function of their job. I write code - that's my core function. People should get on my case if there are bugs in it.
batmaniam 4y ago
Layoffs are not something any employees can control. It's gonna happen or it's not. That's it. Without proper collective power, the only thing we can do is worry. You're right in that language doesn't matter. Hell even the delivery of the message doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the severance or layoff package. That's the real meat. There should be a mandatory law that publishes all layoff packages so that everyone can see if they're getting a fair deal or not.

jasondigitized 4y ago

This "transparency" is a shrewd play to drive higher productivity through a Lord of the Flies work environment.

foobiekr 4y ago

Every time a layoff is discussed, people talk about how the A players are going to leave. Seemingly, people do not understand that the A players could have easily left the whole time but are taken care of - already - so they haven’t. It is not that rare for critical employees to get grants as part of the layoff execution in a pre-emotive action, and now that I’m older I will note that I’ve been on the planning side of layoffs and this is fairly commonplace.

thaanpaa 4y ago
Not sure if it's true in Meta's case (and almost certainly not Twitter's), but from what I've heard, they usually tell the key people that they are safe a day before.
secondcoming 4y ago
+1, there are some quite juvenile sentiments about employment evident in this thread. If a company wants someone to stay they'll try very hard to make that happen. Not every employee is treated equally.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Exactly. When I was younger I was shocked to learn that during an LR companies would “over” cut in order to fund retention for critical people. You’re laying off 7%? This is a good time to free up some additional opex, so just add a few heads above target in order to free opex to comp important people. You won’t get that 7% back but overage you do, usually.
badpun 4y ago
Plenty of A players might be assigned to pointless projects which could be axed wholesale.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  So "A Player" is on a pointless project not providing value to the company gets axed. The value to the company is losing with that "A Player" is nothing because the project they're working on is pointless. These companies could take a more twitter like "print out your code" or global stack ranking to lay people off but i don't think it dodge the problem people describe. The "A Player" could still be mad that all their coworkers got fired and/or the "pointless project" they enjoyed working on got axed and still leave. You just get the add cost, drama, and blow-back (see twitter) that a performance based firing would entail and probably open yourself up to lawsuits (IANAL) if you don't have an adequate paper trail for those performance based filings.

toddmorey 4y ago

Exactly. My first thought was how dystopian it is to start an email about layoffs during the "year of efficiency" with how your company is "building the future of human connection".

noduerme 4y ago

Everything after the first section is definitely written by an LLM, and not one named Zuckerberg.

that_guy_iain 4y ago

> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. Part of the plan is that lots of people leave on their own along with the 10k. For me, the real question is, how many of the A players can afford to leave? Salaries have to be declining many of the top payers have hiring freezes. It seems like even though they're in high demand will they be able to demand the same pay? And if they can't how many are willing to take the jump and leave for less money? They're called golden handcuffs for a reason.

blsapologist42 4y ago
From what I've heard attrition is very low right now. Which makes sense... why leave when you might get paid four months of salary if you are laid off instead.

usrusr 4y ago

> and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere I really don't believe that it's a given that Meta still needs them: the entire org was designed for "innovation", and that has certainly been the right call back in the day. E.g. back when they were still on the edge between buying and competing with whatsapp and instagramm on the product level. But Meta products have been beyond "salvation by innovation" for almost a decade now, what they need to maximize shareholder value is the cheapest setup to keep value extraction up and running for as long as the brands still do their thing. The innovation game is over for them, because the same brand effect that saves the platforms from dying immediately also taints anything Meta buys or starts. Even if Meta had a "Toktik" that had feature equivalency with Tiktok without even a microsecond latency, it would still be stillborn because people just don't want yet another Meta product in their lives (even to the point where they'd rather have a CCP product in their lives, brand awareness isn't exactly a field where logic applies). These days Meta is in the position comparable to that of a single-field oil extraction company that has no hope for getting claims on any other fields and that has its existing field already fully prospected and tapped. That field is far from empty yet, but they only need people to keep the pumps running, no prospectors, no drillers, no acquisition strategists. Those Meta employees that have been traditionally considered "A players" they wouldn't want to lose and that might actually have been paid absurd sums only to keep them from innovating for the competition are all in the "prospectors, drillers, strategists" group and those have exactly zero value for the janitorial task of keeping the pumps running (edit: more likely negative value, not zero). (I know, this almost sounds as if I was saying that Musk's Twitter strategy of burning down the house and then trying to macguyver something useful from the rubble was smart, I'm a bit surprised myself. I guess I do think that the aggressive downsizing would have been the rational thing for Twitter to do, but certainly not as a "step 2" after "step 1: throw 44 billion at previous owners". In hindsight, waiting for 44 billion to show up has certainly been much better for previous Twitter owners than doing the downsizing themselves)

l1silver 4y ago

What if your A players are tired of carrying the load for the B and C players and cherish this news?

vishnugupta 4y ago

For once, as someone with 0 stake in this whole affair, I quite like he's explicitly spelt out the details he has. Specifically the sections "Leaner is better", and "Flatter is faster". Other sections are quite relevant and well written IMO. Also, reading between the lines, Metaverse gets mentioned just twice. I guess they are going to go slow on that? And Oh, "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" tells me WFH at Meta will be a thing of the past. Edit: More content.

blincoln 4y ago

I agree that the press release is way too long. I'd add one more specific recommendation for anyone who ends up in a leadership role: If you're ever in a situation where you need to lay off or otherwise end your relationship with employees, contractors, etc., avoid using terms like "garbage collect[ion]" in the press release, even if you think it's in a section that's not directly about the people you're letting go.

shepardrtc 4y ago

The fault of this lies in upper management. They're getting paid a lot of money to foresee these sorts of things and to plan for them. Hiring like crazy isn't planning, its just doing bare minimum to make it look like you're doing something. But this is also endemic to the Meta org: you can only rise up if you hire enough people below you. And the fault for that ridiculous requirement lies in Zuckerberg. Why are none of the upper management accepting that THEY failed? They should be laid off along with the workers. Including Zuckerberg.

deltree7 4y ago

There are two kinds of people * People who have built companies from 0 to $Trillion (making a lot of employees incredibly wealthy) * ^^ People who give free advice on the internet ^^

dcow 4y ago

Why is the immediate response to criticize? Every single time I've seen layoffs discussed people always ask why it can't feel like more of a conversation and less like a bandaid getting ripped off (because it sucks to be part of the bandaid). Employees want to be included in the conversation. It seems that's exactly what is being done here. How is that insulting?! I mean we also hear the traditional rationale for why you can't announce layoffs in advance but it doesn't seem absurd to try it since there seems to be remarkably little data on the subject. Further, if you're considering letting 10k people go, I don't see how it's bad to have the loose ones leave of their own volition. I actually liked the tone and detail of this post. It certainly seems Meta is preparing to fix more than "100% a management failure"...

twblalock 4y ago

This isn't just an internal email, it's a press release. Everyone knows that if it was just an internal email someone would leak it, so they are writing it knowing that the public will see it.

darth_avocado 4y ago

> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere. That may be the plan. There are two benefits of this: more than 10000 people leave your company, but you don’t have to pay severance to them. And second, A players are compensated well and a layoff forces you to pay them hefty severances. If you think your A players do not contribute as much as they are getting paid, this is a way to push them out without paying that extra cash.

dgs_sgd 4y ago

Conversely, if you're an A player you may be ecstatic in believing the company is finally getting back on track, and therefore want to stay. Something similar happened when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He cancelled ~70% of the product roadmap and the engineers were thrilled that the company finally returned to a coherent vision.

nothrowaways 4y ago

Is "a player" an internal rank?

blsapologist42 4y ago

I'm sure Zuck really appreciates the advice of a random HN commenter. It's not like he has experience running one of the world's largest companies or anything.