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Meta staffers reportedly spar with Mark Zuckerberg after mass layoffs
- calo_star 4y agoI was hoping to see some sparring with Zuckerberg.
- hotpotamus 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2011/may/27/mark-zuckerberg-kill-animals-meat https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20... Given his experience presumably killing a variety of animals, I wouldn't be too anxious to take him on.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoYou make it sound like he's a serial killer when he just does what everyone with a homestead does.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI presume he also wasn't literally sparring with employees.
- baby 4y agoI’ve heard he does BJJ now
- throwaway4533 4y ago> "He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it," Not everyone with a homestead does that though. I know it's the traditional Jewish and Islamic way of doing things but it's cruel to drown an animal in its own blood or letting it die slowly from blood loss when you could just disable the brain in an instant.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoCutting the throat disables the brain almost instantly. If you have ever fainted, it is the same principle. Rapid pressure loss leads to immediate loss of consciousness.
- throwaway4533 4y ago[dead]
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI'll stick with my observations and experience over a propaganda campaign
- dan-0 4y ago> "only eats meat he kills himself" Not sure what you're trying to get at. He eats meat and wants to respect where it came from rather than grabbing a factory raised, killed, and processed McRib and not thinking about it. That sounds like the right way to me if you're going to eat meat. Personally I think it's a bigger problem when someone doesn't know or care (especially if they don't want to know/care) how the meat ended up on their plate. Do you truly believe that someone who would kill and butcher an animal is a threat to _you_?
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoI saw that Mr. Z. was getting into MMA in his free time, but this is taking it a bit too far isn't it?
- baby 4y agoIsn’t that crazy tho? I heard that as well
- gedy 4y agoI know they'll survive in some form, but companies doing multiple rounds of layoffs feel like they are in a death spiral, most especially for culture and employee trust. And fear only motivates for a short time. If this is some attempt to squeeze people back to to office, well they can forget about it. I'd leave tech before I move my family for a company that has a record of cutting people.
- sbarre 4y agoIf Facebook's overall global influence wanes as part of this adjustment, but they remain the social network that people like to use to stay in touch with each other, I feel like this would be a net positive overall.
- 206lol 4y agoZucks responses are incredibly out of touch, holy shit. I can absolutely see why staffers are losing trust. Mark is treating this as if everyone already agrees with the idea. Just, unbelievably callous.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoWhen you are a billionaire you have a large cult of people validating everything you do, reinforcing the worst aspects of your personality.
- pc_edwin 4y agoWhile it may seem like Mark Zuckerberg's responses are out of touch, many employees do understand the situation. Every major tech company (except Apple) is doing the same because they overhired to an incredible extent. Mind you, these companies were already bloated before the pandameic hiring, partly because of a strategy to drain talent from the startups ecosystem.
- baby 4y agoDisagree. Also, are staffers losing trust or are you just seeing anecdotal evidence? It’s pretty easy to know, there’s a pulse survey every 6 months that asks people how much they trust mgmt at fb. It’s the highest metric when I was there and I would bet it still is pretty high. Don’t get fooled by the vocal minority.
- surgical_fire 4y agoDo people answer these in good faith? I always lie in those internal surveys.
- baby 4y agoThe pulses at fb/meta are meant to improve areas that don’t score well. They are also anonymous.
- 4y ago
- shp0ngle 4y agoWould still having Sheryl Sandberg be around make things better or worse? I’m thinking that as she went more and more into background, Facebook lost more and more focus. But maybe it’s just me.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago[flagged]
- pc_edwin 4y agoIn my opinion, they should rip off the bandaid and conduct one big round of layoffs. While I understand that gradual layoffs are less risky and easier for the organization to absorb, it seems short-sighted. Delaying the inevitable will only cause more pain and damage in the long term.
- nickpeterson 4y agoYou could argue twitter did that, how’s that going?
- s1artibartfast 4y agoFine?
- pc_edwin 4y agoGiven the sensitivity of this topic, I will refrain from sharing my (colorful) opinions and maintain a professional tone to avoid scrutiny or censure. If the objective is to boost efficiency and reduce expenses while minimizing negative impacts on the product, one can establish metrics to evaluate the outcome. By examining metrics such as feature velocity, revenue, SRE, and usage, I believe you'll find the answer to your question.
- baby 4y agoThat’s a comment that says nothing if I’ve seen one.
- loeg 4y agoThe last one was supposed to be that one big round.
- pc_edwin 4y agoIn 2019, Facebook had 44k employees but by 2022 that number had more than doubled to 86k. Even with the current layoffs, they will only be back to 2021 levels. It could be argued that it's reasonable to aim for pre-pandemic employee levels, given the drop in valuation, post-pandemic revenue decrease, and the significant loss in revenue from Apple's privacy changes. This is just speculation and should be taken with a grain of salt. To achieve pre-pandemic employee levels, Facebook would need to cut an additional 20K employees.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoMeta pushed up pay for the whole industry. They also created the most important frameworks: React and PyTorch. For everyone hating on the company, they did more for software engineers than any other company. The most meritocratic and highly compensated
- rapsey 4y agoAlso Cassandra, RocksDB, zstd, Open Compute and probably a bunch I'm forgetting. Meta has one of the most stellar open source contributions of any company.
- igsomething 4y agoGraphQL and Jest too.
- thrasibule 4y agoZstd already existed before Yann Collet joined Facebook.
- rektide 4y agoBut also credit for hiring someone and ongoingly supporting good work. Honestly this is one of the more essential things companies could be doing.
- anotherhue 4y agoYou're not wrong, but if we've all collectively decided that companies should be patrons then I think we've made a mistake. These people are only one reorg away from losing their income, Mr. lz4/zstd should be able to focus on his work without such fears, so great is his contribution to our field.
- rektide 4y agoYeah it's wildly off the wall how hard it is for enoromously valuable critical people doing amazing things to get support for themselves & their work. That the direct-corporate-patronage/semi-employeeship model is so prevailing is a sign of brokenness. We need more, collectively, to have a health of our technical ecosystem. Having these corps willing to hire great folk & have them keep hacking is still often a good option, often. "Create more vue than you capture" is easy to back/do when it's so clear who is out there creating mad value.
- lvl102 4y agoThey’re laying off because Zuck is a horrible leader. He went all-in on metaverse that didn’t work out. They could’ve done so much more in AI/ML space with all the resources they had. Now they’re experiencing brain drain and no one wants to work for a guy with bad vision for the future.
- ameister14 4y agoI don't think he has a bad vision for the future but he may be too early, which amounts to a failure either way.
- lvl102 4y agoArguably, Facebook had the best shot at breakthroughs in AI/ML. Instead, Zuck decided to spend all the resources on metaverse toys. He lacks vision. No, he’s an antithesis to innovation.
- ameister14 4y agoI don't know enough about the AI/ML space in terms of competitive business advantage, so I can't really speak to that. I don't think he lacks vision; I think it's pretty hard to go from $0-500,000,000,000 in value without vision, frankly. People like to shit on Zuckerberg, but the truth is he built a global company that something like 1 in 3 people use. Nobody has ever done that before, and it's an incredible achievement. His vision might not be your vision, but I don't think you do something like that without a perspective on the future and how to grasp it.
- baby 4y agoHe def. doesn’t lack vision. And AR/VR is the future for sure. Now I would agree that they were late on AI. But his last post only mentions AI as a tech (not even the metaverse). So let’s see.
- baby 4y agoTrust in mgmt was the highest metric at fb when I used to work there two years ago. Whatever you see outside is BS. Read his latest post to get some idea of how he communicates internally: https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/i-just-shared-this-update-on-our-year-of-efficiency-with-meta-employees-meta-is-/10115030415333981/ https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/i-just-shared-this-update-o... Also I’ll eat my hat if his bet on VR/AR is not going to pay put eventually.
- malermeister 4y agoThis is the right time for tech workers to finally unionize. Too long have we believed tales of exceptionalism and of evil union overlords in the way of meritocracy. An injury to one is an injury to all.
- scarface74 4y agoYeah the poor software developers at Meta making $300K+ should really ban together to have better working conditions.
- code_runner 4y agoI really think people don’t even know why unionizing was a thing back in the day. Dangerous conditions, back breaking labor, endless hours, checks don’t clear, wage collusion…
- snozolli 4y agoI don't know where you've worked, but I've sustained several debilitating repetitive stress injuries as a result of long hours working in tech. I've had multiple higher-ups bitch that we're supposed to be working ten or twelve hour days, then want us to come in on Saturdays, too. Apple and Google colluded to suppress wages: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-google-settle-antitrust-lawsuit-hiring-collusion https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... So, the industry seems to tick all of your boxes.
- scarface74 4y agoAnd you weren’t capable of changing jobs? I can’t imagine it being hard to change jobs as even journeyman “enterprise developer” (which I did for 25 years until 2020). I was able to find a job quickly in 2000 and 2008. And unions wouldn’t have prevented collusion. That was illegal with or without unions.
- 4y ago
- aynyc 4y agoI don’t care much for Facebook, but I miss the days when my Facebook feed is all my friends & family. I don’t mind ads here or there or if they have a paid model, I would pay that as well. It’s funny that our family’s main sharing is shared album on iphoto now.
- headsoup 4y agoYeah, I lost all my friends and family too, now just ads and terrible news. /s
- wenc 4y agoIt still can be. Most of my friends are still in FB (I'm also of a certain generation where none of the people I care about are on IG or TikTok, so those networks mean nothing to me). I ruthlessly unfollow people who post garbage links on FB and only follow who post their own content so I find my FB feed to be surprisingly sane and helps me keep in touch with people I've met throughout the years in all the cities I've ever lived in, which is not a few. Despite younger people and curmudgeons retreating from FB -- no concern of mine since my own social network of people my age is what I care about (and one day soon the IG and TikTok crowd will learn that they are old school grandpas too and that they're the MySpace of their generation) -- I find I can still tell stories with pictures and words on FB better than any other platform except blogs, but no one follows blogs these days. IG stories are too short, posts are too limited (you can't caption individual pictures), and TikTok requires you to sit through a 15s video. Because I ruthlessly unfollow garbage, I don't think I've seen a political post or any divisive content in years. Instead I've gotten to "travel" with friends to different countries, gotten updates on their kids and their struggles with growing older, volunteer efforts that they're part of, etc. FB is still useful for those of us who use it correctly, and for those of us for whom the written word is still more important the pictures or videos.
- baby 4y agoThere’s no chance this would happen unless they allow people to move back to a chronological timeline. I
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> “I would guess that the way people would evaluate whether you trust me and want to work at this company in whether we are succeeding in making progress toward the overall stated goals,” Zuckerberg said, according to the Post. “I think a lot of this is about the results we are able to deliver.” Great answer for shareholders. Not the answer employees are looking for when trying to understand if their job will continue to exist. Especially when front-line engineers don’t have as much control over whether or not their project succeeds in the market as the execs and product people do.
- lapcat 4y agoThe original story is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/16/zuckerberg-meta-townhall/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/16/zuckerb...
- naillo 4y agoTheir repetition of and use of the term 'Year of Efficiency' always feels like branding that'd come out of chinese government.
- softwaredoug 4y agoLoss of your top performers trust (and creativity/productivity) is cited why layoffs cost more than they save > short-term cost savings provided by a layoff are overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation 1 - https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
- johannes1234321 4y ago> In a show of support, Zuckerberg said he understood that workers are feeling uncertain as they wait for the possibility that they could be laid off. He added, however, that “it’s not like we can just pause working while we are figuring this out.” Why should a worker be motivated to do work if by the next day they could be gone?
- loeg 4y agoWell, for example, they're still getting paid for the work hours they're putting in today, whether or not they're laid off tomorrow.
- effingwewt 4y agoMan the mental gymnastics in this thread are hilarious. No one could possibly concentrate enough to do good work with the loomimg axe. I don't care if you're writing code or flipping burgers the distraction is mind-numbing.
- loeg 4y agoI don't enjoy the period between layoff announcements and finding out you were (or were not) laid off, but I've been through them several times and don't have a problem concentrating enough to "do good work." My work output might be mildly reduced, but it's certainly not zero. I understand this might vary between individuals. It's just overstating your case to claim that it is impossible.
- johannes1234321 4y agoLet's look at the specific case: 1) Company says "we reduce force" and fires a bunch of employees 2) They say "we'll fire a bug chunk more" 3) they notice productivity is low 4) boss says "won't tell you, whether you can keep your job" This won't help to increase morale and productivity.
- 4y ago
- debacle 4y agoI think there's a big gulf in our industry between people who lived through 2008-2010, and people who didn't. We might not go back to that dire of a situation, but I imagine it will be closer than we have been for quite some time. A lot of people see Zuckerberg as being an asshole, where really he is going above and beyond by being this communicative. To be a CEO, you have to be a bastard sometimes. You don't have a choice. The trick is in the execution.
- roland35 4y agoI don't think anyone is faulting Zuckerberg for the November layoffs - things were looking pretty dire at that time and the stock dropped all the way under $90. However what people are upset about now is that is another huge layoff was announced only a few months later. The first one was supposed to be "deep" enough.
- baby 4y agoCan’t recommend more to read his post here: https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/i-just-shared-this-update-on-our-year-of-efficiency-with-meta-employees-meta-is-/10115030415333981/ https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/i-just-shared-this-update-o... Imo it’s great and reflects what I saw from him when I used to work there.
- effingwewt 4y agoSo you dont currently work there, but insist you know better than everyone else about the inner-workings. All your posts in this thread read like you are head of FB PR.
- baby 4y agoReply to the specific comment you want to argue against instead of being personal. This attitude is not going to take you far.
- effingwewt 4y ago
- baby 4y agoMeta staffers were sparring all the time when I was at then called Facebook company. It was during the last elections and it was excruciating. People would be very agressive during Q&A and internally in posts and groups. We should do this, we should do that, this is wrong, no THIS is wrong. Everybody had their righteous opinions on how the company and specific teams were supposed to work. I remember Mark becoming red with anger during some of these weekly Q&As, and the CTO looking like he was about to cry. Yet they still kept on going and continued to give these weekly Q&A (I think a lot of people respected them for that, even with the divisions I believe trust in mgmt was the highest metric at fb) I remember fighting against Chinese groups criticizing western medias and talking about how tiananmen massacre is a hoax while Mark was publicly reprimanding the people who would scratch the “black” of “black lives matter” from some of the walls of the office to overwrite it with “all”. During all that time the American people hated fb. HN couldn’t comprehend how engineers could accept to join and work at facebook. The social dilemma came out on Netflix. As someone who really liked the facebook app and thought it would continue to change the world in a good way, it was really hard to read about the company externally and to see employees destroying it from the inside. I think my opinion now is that 1) any type of organization becomes problematic once it gets too large/accumulates too much power (religion and the government are much more of a problem than Meta though) and 2) politics shouldn’t be allowed internally. People shouldn’t “come to work as themselves”. People really suck and they should keep a lot of things to themselves.
- loeg 4y agoBy "spar" they mean "ask questions at the first all-hands since the 2nd round of layoffs were announced." Which, sure? But there's not a lot of additional detail in this story.
- baby 4y agoWhich happens ALL the time. There’s all sort of extreme people who take the mic and go a bit too extreme during these sessions.
- sys_64738 4y agoI guess these employees failed to heed this story. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back-of-facebooks-sign-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back...
- ydnaclementine 4y agoIf you die in the metaverse, you die in real life