61 ms·

Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta

579 points by pretext 4y ago

game_the0ry 4y ago
> Within Meta, there is pressure to demonstrate that people are working hard, two employees said. Intense scrutiny has come in recent workplace reviews, which the management consultancy firm Bain and Company is assisting. Workers, especially in middle management, are being asked to justify why their jobs are crucial to Meta’s goals. I thought scenes like this would only happen in movies like The Office. Never did I expect something like that to happen in real life. Corporate america is so dumb.
- dumbotron 4y ago
  FAANG hires 2 types of people: people who are good and people who are good at working the system. A lot of people who are good at working the system worked their way up to VP of very little, but even that comes with VP pay. It happens on the IC track, too. There are people who have big, handwavey ideas, but in hindsight, didn't deliver anything concrete other than google docs.
loeg 4y ago
> And for the first time, some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. What? The November 2022 layoffs were already 50:50 engineering:biz. The communication around the April layoffs has been that they will cut less in engineering groups (or at least, software engineering roles).
pengaru 4y ago
If only I could remember where I left that tiny violin...
pascalxus 4y ago
>>> "“They’re saying it’s ‘Hunger Games’ meets ‘Lord of the Flies,’ where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management.” It sounds like people are really insecure about themselves financially or egoistically. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to have your job or you can't go without one for a few a years. and if you're ego can't handle being laid off or fired, you may want to do something about that because jobs these days don't last much longer than 2-4 years at most places: just look at people's resumes on linkedIn.
- klodolph 4y ago
  Realistically speaking, it’s hard for many adults to get into a position where they can go without a job for a few years, even if you are at a high-paying company like Meta. A lot of Meta employees are at places with high cost of living, and you can try to live frugally, but frugality doesn’t solve your problems instantly. I think we can be sympathetic to the insecurity these people have without considering whether they put themselves in that position. There is a combination of internal (psychological) and external (environmental) factors at play here.
  - JohnMakin 4y ago
    yea that comment is so out of touch. What % of US adults have enough savings to live 2-4 years on their current lifestyle? I'd bet it's very low. Maybe not as low as the subset making a FAANG income, but probably still low.
  - pascalxus 4y ago
    There's nothing wrong with sympathy. I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone who works at a software company. Those FANGs can be especially toxic. The fact is, how you spend your money, it's a choice, especially if you're single. For singles, no excuses. In my twenties, i rented a room, slept on a surfboard and ate oatmeal. If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could retire in 5-10 years.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      > If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could retire in 5-10 years. Could you elaborate on this? Do you think that other people SHOULD do this? Because I think we should be sympathetic to people who don’t live like ascetic monks, and it seems unkind to tell people that they could have retired if they lived like an ascetic monk.
    - greatpostman 4y ago
      No you can’t retire. Only if you don’t have a family, and even then you just get ten years of not working. And good luck attracting a good woman to have kids with while you sleep in a dump
etc-hosts 4y ago
It's only been a few years. Genentech dumped money into a hole for 20 years before having a viable product.
- lisasays 4y ago
  There's a difference developing stuff that's costly/risky but which people clearly need -- and hence, taking a longer than usual road to profitability ... And going all out building stuff, like the Metaverse -- that people just plainly don't want.
theGnuMe 4y ago
The layoffs will continue until the stock (market) improves.
gspencley 4y ago
Funny, I thought working at Meta would be the thing that would create a morale crises at Meta.
henry2023 4y ago
The morale crisis should have come when they understood that their work directly and negatively impacts on our younger generation’s mental health.
Giorgi 4y ago
As AI takes over, it is going to get worse.
hendersoon 4y ago
Meta has always had a morale crisis, recently exacerbated by Cambridge Analytica and the like. People wanted to work there because of the money. Flat-out. Once the pay is equivalent to the rest of the industry and the extravagant perks are gone, wouldn't you prefer to work somewhere at least moderately less evil? I certainly would.
standardUser 4y ago
I still can't believe the Metaverse is the core strategy of a major global corporation. I've been deep in technology my entire life and I honestly couldn't even tell you what the Metaverse is. I can talk all day long about AI or crypto or online gaming or how to build web apps but gun to my head, I could not give even a rough definition of what the metaverse is or is supposed to be.
- krapp 4y ago
  Have you tried googling it?
  - croes 4y ago
    Which of the dozens of definitions is the right one?
    - krapp 4y ago
      I'm not aware of dozens of definitions, at least not which apply to the context of this particular thread. Maybe you should start at the Wikipedia page[0] for what is commonly accepted as the general definition. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
      - standardUser 4y ago
        Based on what I just read, I think it would take significant effort to outline the precise differences between the Metaverse and the Internet. Kind of like "Web 2.0" which was just a bizarre way of saying "The internet, but it has changed gradually over time, as most thing do", as if we needed to be reminded that technologies are not eternally static.
      - croes 4y ago
        It's a buzzword that is used for multiple similar things without a clear definition: "Broadly speaking, the technologies companies refer to when they talk about “the metaverse” can include virtual reality—characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you're not playing—as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. Virtual worlds—such as aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones—have started referring to themselves as “the metaverse.” Many companies that have hopped on board the metaverse bandwagon also envision some sort of new digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. In the more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it's interoperable, allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another, though this is harder than it sounds" https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/
JohnMakin 4y ago
It seems to me like it'd be extraordinarily difficult at a company whose product is supposed to "connect people" and bring people together, while even from the outside it's transparently built to extract the most data and dollars it possibly can from its users, often at their great expense (see teen suicide numbers and depression being linked to social media usage). While internally, they don't even pretend to care. For a while this was probably easy for "metamates" to ignore due to the astoundingly inflated salaries compared to the rest of the non-FAANG tech sector, but when you start wantonly laying off massive chunks of the company based on poor decisions you made pursuing this "goal," I mean, it would seem to be that nearly anyone with a soul would be feeling demoralized by now.
anticristi 4y ago
I can't help wondering if Meta is suffering death by GDPR and co. Meta really had only one revenue stream: ads. Given the recent GDPR fines, it's clear that personalized ads are increasingly illegal in the EU. Other jurisdictions will follow suit (e.g. CCPA). Contrast that with Google, who, although makes tons of ad money, had other revenue streams: cloud, workspace, YouTube Joins, pay, App Store, etc.
SimonPStevens 4y ago
I wonder if the visible white patch around Zuckerberg's eyes in the main photo are genuinely because he's been wearing a VR headset for 12 hours a day testing the metaverse or if they added it in Photoshop to make it look like he had.
asdfman123 4y ago
The comments in this thread baffles me, because I thought the Metaverse was doomed from the start, and I think the disconnect is many people believe in the "great man theory." Mark Zuckerberg didn't create social media: he rode the social media wave. He was the best-positioned competitor, which counts for a lot, but the other conditions had to be there first. Some seem to think he willed social media into existence -- including himself -- which suggests he'd be able to will the Metaverse into existence too. But no amount of investment or strategy will make a large fraction of the population want something.
Vapormac 4y ago
https://archive.is/RHz9R https://archive.is/RHz9R (No paywall)
yumraj 4y ago
How's the morale at Twitter?
- jti107 4y ago
  fantastic! everyone left is hardcore
jhatemyjob 4y ago
Ok so I actually work at Meta and I hope they do more layoffs. There are so many redundant teams and useless features being pushed. After the last layoff my job got so much easier because I wasn't constantly fighting people trying to ship dumb features that pollute the codebase. And even if I get laid off there's a fat severance package waiting for me. It's a win-win.
jfranche 4y ago
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graupel 4y ago
https://archive.is/RHz9R https://archive.is/RHz9R
themagician 4y ago
People look at Meta with these bizarro rose-colored glasses, as if it was once a company with some nobel mission that lost its way. Facebook, from the very beginning, knew what it was doing once they found the "secret". They found, by accident, the ability tap into people's insecurities and exploit that to extract data and then serve ads that further insecurities. They found an emotional loop that printed dollars. People gave up an entire lifetime of information for free so they could feel connected. The Metaverse is just trying to get lightning to strike twice. It will probably get there. As people become more isolated they will become more insecure and place an even higher value on social interaction. VR sucks. Flat screens and fixed focal point lenses result in a huge out of focus area—you move your eyes within the headset and you can't focus—which feels unnatural. Eventually we will solve this, and once we do it will go mainstream. If you can look past the crappy optics and you log into VRChat today it feels… good. It feels like you are actually interacting with people. It simply feels good. Most people just can't look past the poor optics. You put a $2000 headset on the average person and their response is always, "Cool, but it's kinda heavy. Also, why is it so blurry?" Someone will solve this, eventually. Meta is banking on exactly what made Facebook. They will create a space that makes you feel good, and then get you to give up even more information and see even more ads designed explicitly to manipulate you because the advertiser knows so much about you. Honestly, it's a brilliant idea to try and do the same thing again but harder. Possible it's too early, but if you have billions to blow why not. Right now it's a product that only caters to the most socially isolated individuals. That will change. Why did my parents join Facebook? They did it because they were lonely. It's why the Facebook audience is now so old. It took them a while to come up with a UI that was easy enough for old people to use it, but they did. They are trying to do the same with VR. There's a pretty good chance of success in my opinion.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  > you log into VRChat today it feels… good. It feels like you are actually interacting with people. That's exactly it: you're actually interacting with people. In the beginning, Facebook had _only_ people: your friends. If you logged into Facebook then and had 0 friends, arguably nothing would happen. Today, only about every 3rd post is by a person, even if you have hundreds of friends. There probably is a ratio of algorithmically-generated v.s human content that is acceptable to their users.... but I'm chasing the 100% too :)
annadane 4y ago
I think people are missing the point when they call Metaverse a 'misstep' because it implies Zuckerberg was a good actor who just happened to get this one thing wrong... if you look through his history of things like forced Whatsapp sharing (plus Onavo), Free Basics, all of the shitty things the company does... the Metaverse was never a good faith effort and people need to understand that; newsflash, he's not a shining example of what a good person is (And the whole stealing Facebook from other people in the first place, anyway)
symlinkk 4y ago
I honestly don’t understand why VR hasn’t caught on. Every time I let someone try my Quest for the first time their minds are blown. It’s very cool technology and seems like the next logical step for video games.
- Err_Eek 4y ago
  I was asking myself the same question. The conclusion I came to is that the getting your mind blown phase doesn't keep you coming back again and again -- it's why games like Minecraft/League of Legends have much higher player counts than say The Last of Us, or other certified mind-blowing games. I have a Quest 2 and a Steam Deck. Definitely my Steam Deck is getting more use, though it's initial "wow" factor was smaller.
- adamwong246 4y ago
  I fear and despise the technology. Every VR experience I have tried feels less like the metaverse and more like I have slipped into the backrooms- a liminal waking nightmare. Perhaps I'm too old but I fear for the day that it's no longer a niche toy and we are at long last _compelled_ to wear a VR headset. At that point, adios reality. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” except instead of a boot it's a Oculus rift thats been surgically attached to your skull.
- reportgunner 4y ago
  Probably because that experience of trying a VR headset is 80% of what it provides. Once the novelty wears off you find out there is not much to do with a VR headset for extended periods of time.
  - zmmmmm 4y ago
    I think this is close to it. The challenge is the actual sticky applications are a lot less sexy than the ones that are like a sugar hit. When the novelty IS the value, you are always going to struggle with retention. There are real applications where the value is more than that, but they are never the ones you would show to someone in the first 5 minutes because they aren't nearly as impressive.
steve76 4y ago
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roflyear 4y ago
The absentee boss thing is real across the industry right now. What are these managers doing? Consulting? Working other jobs? They are certainly not engaged at work.
dahwolf 4y ago
For close to a decade now, people have been insisting that Facebook is in trouble because young folks don't like it. I've always rejected that idea because usage kept growing regardless, young users or not. Something's different now though, something is in the air. I genuinely believe we've achieved peak social media already, and it's downhill from here. Usage is close to maximized. The amount of distractions one can tolerate in the form of ads has breached tolerance levels. There's the repetitiveness. Social media is now > 15 years old. Reading content on a daily basis even if you find said content mildly enjoyable is getting very "meh". Influencers, activists, scammers, spammers have developed a wide array of tactics that piggy-back on outrage algorithms that make feeds upsetting instead of pleasant. I think an increasing amount of people are realizing that social media sucks. You can do without it or do with less of it, and this only improves your life. I don't expect a super steep decline, rather a lengthy slow one. For sure not any meaningful growth, other than the occasional sideways switch. That definitely feels like an existential problem for Facebook.
- adamwong246 4y ago
  Reminds me of the video game crash of the 80's. Even tho the tech was advancing rapidly, American game makers kept shoveling crap into the customer's mouths and eventually the customers vomited.
- Nathanba 4y ago
  Personally I don't think that social media will ever fall out of fashion because it's a core human biological need. All Facebook has to do is to keep up with the latest trend, whatever that may be. Maybe people will rather livechat than post static content. Or maybe they rather sit around in a 3d virtual environment. Who knows. But they'll always want to connect with others. Maybe they'll even prefer talking to an AI than to humans but that's still effectively a social interaction that Facebook can provide and connect. They'll simply pivot towards letting you create your own AI friends.
  - dahwolf 4y ago
    There's a pretty big gap between socializing/communicating as a core human need and this taking shape in the form of current social media. Which didn't exist for 99.999% of our history and is in many ways unnatural.
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ggm 4y ago
VR has a time lag issue which I personally think is unfixable. I do not believe we have systems which can react in real-time without something morally akin to an uncanny valley glitch, somewhere in the processing loop. Make it 120hz. make it HD. make it as good as you like, I am really sure that for the forseeable future computing ALL the asynchronous real-world event changes and arranging for them to arrive at the right time, compared to your own movements is functionally impossible. A later thread speaks to the specific torture test: simulate being in a stadium for all 100,000 people and show ME the one person who is waving a giant hand I want to look at, out of 1000, against the game play on the field. You've now got to martial 100,000 events, render them into my view, and focus on a random singleton in real-time against game play, no matter how I move my head. Simulataneously, for everyone, with other async events taking place beside me, or in another sense-space. Either you glitch the VR experience, or you put me on delay. Zuckerberg swung the company to deliver an experience which was never going to score 8 out of 10 for average user experience. It was always heading to 3 out of 10. He should have put it into a sub-division and spent his personal risk money on it, not bet the company.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  VR is a graveyard category like flying cars, Juicero, and perpetual motion.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Almost any demonstrator I have seen of it in semi-industrial or science use, is as a PR tool. It is indeed fantastic to be able to fly through the wiring diagram of a 747 or rotate a molecule in real-time, but what you're doing is pedagogical at best, and probably promotional no matter what. Architects can design in 2D perfectly well. Immersion is good for selling designs, but so is a cardboard model on the boardroom table, and if you make the sale, somebody gets to keep it as a tchotke. "what is the sun angle and shading like at midday and evening" you can do with packages off the shelf. "show me now" is all you've got in VR
nikolasdimi 4y ago
It's disheartening to hear :) It also proves that people who predicted this for the metaverse were right. I thought i was the only one not getting it because i am old :) Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has declared that 2023 will be the “year of efficiency” at his company. So far, efficiency has translated into mass layoffs.
zmmmmm 4y ago
Everyone seems to be reacting to this as if it's being done out of necessity due to financial pressures. I see it much more as Zuckerberg on a mission. Facebook is doing OK as far as we know. Neither the metaverse failing (too early for its financial impact to be a factor) nor Facebook's performance at surface level are driving this. It seems to me more like Zuckerberg is taking back the company after the Sandberg years and molding it in his own image again - sharp and scrappy and focused. Will be very interesting to see if he can pull it off, or if as everyone is anticipating, it's just going to crater morale to the point where nobody good is left there.
EchoReflection 3y ago
the faster Meta crumbles into oblivion the better. Zuckface and Twitbook and Crapchat and all the other "social" media platforms are literally just data-harvesting programs that are, like the fashion industry, just trying to make money (which is fine) by manipulating human behavior and perceptions/ideas about what "normal" is.
bullen 4y ago
[flagged]
- pevey 4y ago
  Just open the link in a private/incognito window
  - WakoMan12 4y ago
    private/incognito window is for pr0n not ycomnews
- neom 4y ago
  You can go to archive.is and put the url in. Braves "speedreader" mode typically works too, I use it a lot Here is the bypass url for you: https://archive.is/ta5js https://archive.is/ta5js
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Workers at Facebook 10 years ago: I’m glad my company isn’t like Microsoft. Workers now: I wish my company was like Microsoft.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Aye! Meta tried recruiting in the ML space. The hook? Half of the interviewers were Microsoft alumni that had a ton of money thrown at them. I wonder where those folks are today.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Probably back at Microsoft.
    - romanovcode 4y ago
      MS bet on OpenAI is one of the biggest tech success stories of this decade for sure. Now everyone wants a pie of it but it seems that they are way behind for some reason (for example Google Bard is nothing compared to OpenAI implementation)
      - red_admiral 4y ago
        Yes, it's quite ironic isn't it that the big AI progress is being made not by the cool kids at Alphabet and Meta and the like, but in a place backed by "boring" old Microsoft. Whatever next - Bing becoming actually useful, perhaps?
        threeseed 4y ago
        The fundamental research in the AI space (that OpenAI depends so much on) originally came from Alphabet and Meta. They just never thought to productise it.
        theGnuMe 4y ago
grej 4y ago
https://archive.is/ta5js https://archive.is/ta5js
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tyingq 4y ago
The mixed messaging is pretty stunning. Pushing the metaverse, but simultaneously pushing "be at the office". Then seniors leaders spending more time on LLM projects than on the metaverse concept. All from their new remote homes rather than the office.
- brookst 4y ago
  No defense of meta, but this doesn’t seem like a contradiction. If they thought the metaverse was done and ready to use for work, they wouldn’t need to invest in building it. Seems a bit like wondering why the construction management team doesn’t just use the office building they’re constructing rather than a trailer.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    I was assuming the metaverse was an extension/improvement on doing things remotely, rather than a pre-requisite for it to work at all. Meaning you would have to believe remote is a solid concept to start with. And, there's the obvious contradiction that working remote seems fine for a lot of the senior leadership.
  - btown 4y ago
    If you’re $13.7 billion into a project and can’t even dogfood it internally, you’re at least $13.6 billion beyond where you should be.
    - EFreethought 4y ago
      About $6 billion for everything above the waist, $6 billion for legs. Toes: another $6 billion, and the world is Meta's oyster.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- loeg 4y ago
  There's also mixed messaging about being at the office. They're cutting transportation programs and in-office benefits. Even reducing the variety of sodas stocked in the kitchens (you would think there isn't much cost saving there).
endisneigh 4y ago
Meta is a great example of why you need a really good vision and execution. Imagine an alternative world where instead of acquiring Oculus and later pivoting to the metaverse, Zuckerboard went all in on AI (LLM weren't a thing quite yet then), and instead rebranded the company Fabula (tale in latin), and developed AI technology to accelerate their original mission of connecting people. Though it’s true Facebook has an amazing AI team, it’s my understanding none of it has really been turned into product. In that regard they have been more like Google and less like OpenAI They likely would've created something similar to LLMs by themselves in short order, but in the worst case could have made their own LLM after the Google paper. You could imagine all sort of neat affordances given by an AI: - Friendship level suggestions on what to do - Meetup work, suggested on similar likes - Improved suggestions etc I bet that hypothetical pivot would've been better than the metaverse. At this point (2023) you might imagine things iterating to the point where users have some sort of assist that helps facilitate engagement with your facebook friends (with ads, of course, hah).
- ripvanwinkle 4y ago
  Part of the Meta's problem is this spiel about connecting people. Conversations internally are all about monetizing users and not losing any revenue due to new privacy regulations. Apart from the Metaverse which is also cloaked in "connecting people" there is no effort to take the technology and capabilities in the company and conquer new domains. Like Google getting into Office collaboration and Cloud computing etc. So that spiel about "connecting people" while being a bunch of whitewash is also restricting possibilities for the company
- lostmsu 4y ago
  > Zuckerboard went all in on AI Hindsight is 20/20
- suzzer99 4y ago
  The problem is I don't need any of this stuff and I know a ton of people who feel the same way. If FB's timeline had a chronological option like twitter, I would switch to it tomorrow, then mute people who bugged me. Every algorithm seems to end up optimizing for engagement, which basically means car wrecks, conspiracy theories, and other outrageous controversial stuff. Youtube will never stop recommending Jordan Peterson, no matter how many times you vote it down, because the algorithm has figured out that if it can get you into JP, it will open up a whole new world of engagement as you head further and further down the alt-right rabbit hole. So it's worth a periodic try at the hail mary, even for users who previously showed active aversion to JP.
neom 4y ago
The problem I have with articles like this is, well, sample size. They talked to 9 former and current employees, out of 60,000 employees. I'm no fan of Meta, but is it really fair to say there is a "crisis" of morale at a company with such a tiny sample size?
- waylandsmithers 4y ago
  Yeah, Facebook is just the company that everyone loves to hate, and the NYT often joins in the chorus. This one seems especially agenda-laden, however: > absentee leadership, > Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, is on parental leave after the birth of his third child > The company’s stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago This is pretty disingenuous, considering nearly all tech stocks fell off, and Meta stock has more than doubled since bottoming out at around 90/share several months ago. The metaverse is stupid and nobody wants it! > While the company has sold 20 million virtual reality headsets — more than any other company producing similar tech —
  - roland35 4y ago
    It's not just Meta, journalists and commenters even on tech sites like Ars Technica or Verge seem to love piling on any negative coverage about working at big tech companies (Google, Uber, even Apple occasionally). I think Meta and Google are particularly disliked by journalists due to both specifically cutting into news industries. But I think a bigger part of it is the idea that software engineers are overpaid and spoiled brats!
    - sahila 4y ago
      Perhaps the simplest explanation is these kinds of articles get lots of clicks and views, I doubt most writers have a big agenda when starting an article like this.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Even if you have access to employee survey data, what constitutes a "morale crisis" exactly? So a variety of metrics are down after layoffs, general online negativity, and bad press. In other news, water is wet. And doubtless execs are concerned. But is that really a "morale crisis" or just what to expect in a belt-tightening era at just about any company (and certainly one whose employees expected great stock appreciation and job stability and now don't have either)?
mmmmmbop 4y ago
The Metaverse was always such a bad direction. At the time, I was really unsure about my intuition -- I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have some data to back that up. As it stands, my intuition (and everybody else's) turned out to be right. It's been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto. Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit fractal. At the height of the crypto boom, I was beginning to doubt my conclusions and started to think that perhaps the societal nature of crypto is a force in itself. Like religion, if enough people believe in it, it becomes reality to some extent. But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along. Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It's clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be, and that they are providing clear value right away. It's no wonder that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards it. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company pivot two years too early -- I'm sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot to today, it'd be towards generative AI.
- amjnsx 4y ago
  What made you decide crypto was bullshit all along? It has had quite a few booms as well as busts, and various scams and frauds for good measure. As far as I know the last bust wasn’t much different to the ones that came before it.
- mettamage 4y ago
  To be fair, when Facebook was created there was no data either. Data can be useful but I have yet to hear a story where data played a pivotal role in creating a successful startup
  - minsc_and_boo 4y ago
    Hot or Not was a popular site, and Facebook was created to be that but exclusively for college students. It was called Facemash.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    There was indeed data when facebook started. It was called myspace.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> Mr. Zuckerberg has made a big bet on the metaverse, an immersive online world. This is one of those "Were there any adults in the room when the decision was discussed?" instances that I see all over the place, these days. Like 3D televisions, immersive 3D avatar worlds have been tried -more than once. They work great for games, but not for real-life stuff. There are a few "corner cases," where it's being supported (I think there.com is still a thing), but otherwise, it only exists in the minds of SF writers.
- draw_down 4y ago
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- loeg 4y ago
  Where were the adults in the room when Zuckerberg was given supervoting stock? He has the majority of voting shares in the company and can basically do whatever he wants.
- aksss 4y ago
  Most tech people have a vision of what VR “should be”, but perhaps not as many fully appreciate that it’s a very, very difficult problem that people have been chipping away at for decades with relatively modest gains. Oculus is exponentially better than the Nintendo Virtual Boy, but like Virtual Boy the current capabilities fall very short of the vision and ultimately disappoint after one is confronted with the limitations, nearer at hand than the marketing hype would have one believe. Given this, the Meta pivot seemed like the move of someone caught up in their own marketing/bullshit but unable to get their own bearings on the matter (which would have checked the hype cycle). To some extent Zuck’s empire can shape the world at least temporarily, but nothing gets us past the fact that the tech just isn’t able to meet expectations yet. So there’s this vacuum or hole in Meta’s strat that leaves them rapidly needing to move the tech forward at a miraculous pace (which I wouldn’t bet on happening) or “re-pivoting” (de-pivoting?).
- Balgair 4y ago
  I think it would be great for pay-per-view events. Imagine being on the 50 yard line of the superbowl for $10. Imagine being in the stands of your kids volleyball game from your hotel room on a work trip. Live events, large or small, are the killer app, I think.
podgib 4y ago
> the cuts expected this month will be the first to affect tech departments, including engineers, which has surprised employees Huh? The earlier layoffs definitely affected tech. I know of a bunch of former colleagues in engineering roles that were laid off in the first round. Sure, recruiting was affected more, which makes sense when hiring was reduced to almost zero, but this is very much not the first time engineers will be included in layoffs.
- ozmodiar 4y ago
  Back in a previous life in a chemical R&D lab the company did layoffs and claimed to the media that it was all to marketing and administration. In the lab we lost about 50% of our researchers but weren't allowed to talk to anyone about it. I'm guessing companies really want to make it look like layoffs aren't impacting the people responsible for the product, and feed questionable data to that effect.
- phyrex 4y ago
  Yeah that’s nonsense. Last round was about 50% engineering!
  - tru3_power 4y ago
    Seems like typical media bias against FB. Don’t forget- FB was bullying media companies for a while. Now they are getting a chance to strike back.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      Huh? How is claiming that Meta hasn't cut any Engineering roles yet bias against Meta? If anything it's painting Meta in a more positive light.
      - zuminator 4y ago
        The misleading implication is that now suddenly Meta is in panic mode and making unprecedentedly drastic cuts, as opposed to just ratcheting its previous layoff policies.
MangoCoffee 4y ago
a lot of big techs doing layoffs. you will find a lot of ex-employees got something to say about their former employer.
romanovcode 4y ago
The article does not state it. But I wonder - do these layoffs are from Metaverse project? If so, what would those people expect? Did they really believe in the project when they applied and worked on it?
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  I would want to be on a team that builds (or uses) AI tools that can be used to build out the metaverse. That seems like a balanced approach.
JCM9 4y ago
You don’t find out who is great at business when everything is up and to the right, you find out when the market is rough. The current market is already doing a good job of shaking out companies and executives that really weren’t very good but that was being masked by a market where you had to try hard not to succeed.
psniff 4y ago
This is a poorly reported article. 1) The author seems to think 2 rounds of layoffs have already been executed and now a third is coming, when actually the 2nd round of layoffs is still being executed. 2) The author mentions twice that the coming round of layoffs will affect engineering for the first time; this is not true -- thousands of eng were laid off in the first round. 3) The author mentions that the stock price has dropped 43% from its peak as evidence that Meta faces a precarious future. No mention that META has been one of the hottest tech stocks in 23Q1, gaining more than 75%. I'm no Meta apologist, and this is really a "dog bites man" story anyway ("layoffs announced; morale bad") but I don't really trust this author's general reporting competence.
jmacd 4y ago
In a comment I made about 18 months ago, I noted that Facebook's insufficient investment in anything useful would hold them back. The true cost of the Metaverse isn't solely the capital needed for development; it's also the opportunity cost that will become apparent in the future. What aren't they doing that they could be? There is also another aspect to consider. The swift expansion of generative AI is driving the transition from a Social Graph to a Content Graph. Online users are now more interested in engaging, up-to-date content rather than keeping up with their friends' activities. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube pioneered this trend, while Twitter's timeline modifications serve as a functional yet imperfect example. Content discovery now takes precedence over static friend lists. The core principle that Facebook was built on is gradually crumbling. This isn't just about Apple's privacy policies or regulatory constraints; it's a fundamental shift in user behavior. The primary reason people visit Facebook—connecting with people they know—is now at odds with their main online activity: consuming content from strangers. Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past social connections. Facebook is attempting to adapt, but their efforts only diminish the platform's value for average users. Instagram's discovery page and Reels are examples, but the latter pales in comparison to TikTok. Facebook's endeavors in short-form video are likely a futile game of catch-up, a classic innovator's dilemma. The Metaverse's introduction seemed like a desperate, last-minute attempt from the C-suite to save face. Anyone who has worked at a high-profile tech company has likely seen this tactic before: weak financial quarters lead to premature product announcements. The all-encompassing nature of the Metaverse announcement signals that something is amiss. It's only more futile now.
- helen___keller 4y ago
  > Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past social connections. At some point, the social internet started existing primarily to make people feel good about their own strongly held controversial opinions. Why would I go on Facebook, where the experience is seeing an old friend hold some dumb half baked opinion they picked up from Fox/CNN then bicker with them, when I could go to twitter and watch the top influencer in my ring dunk on the top influencer in the competitions ring, making myself instantly feel more right?
jfranche 4y ago
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Entinel 4y ago
I would think working at Meta at all would be a morale crisis.
nonethewiser 4y ago
This is totally an aside, but Im not into crypto and have a fairly negative connotation with it but I don’t necessarily think crypto is bullshit. I think the problem with crypto is that it misjudges the world, or is at least positioned for a very cynical version of the world that doesn’t currently exist. Is crypto kept alive on evangelism? Yes. Not really that useful at the moment (and maybe never will be)? Yes. Has lots of pump and dump, scams, bad people doing bad stuff? People who have no clue what they’re talking about spewing bullshit? Resounding yes. But I don’t think it’s bullshit because it does solve a real problem - verifying transactions independently. But of course there are trade offs with this, such as bitcoin’s power consumption. The disconnect comes from crypto people misjudging the world. The current financial system simply isn’t so bad to require all the weird trade offs of crypto.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Agreed with all of the above, but crypto !== bitcoin, and bitcoin is basically one of the few last holdouts using Proof of Work consensus at this point. I don't know if it will ever be displaced because there are so many irrational people in the space, but whatever happens with crypto, I hope consensus mechanisms that aren't energy-hungry displace proof of work.
- VHRanger 4y ago
  Bitcoin's power consumption isn't a "tradeoff". It's just as centralized as proof of stake systems. Bitcoin's power consumption is just appealing to the religious aspect of the network : if we changed it, it would go against the original design. Even though it burns 1% of world energy consumption for that stupidity.
- sethd 4y ago
  It doesn't solve a real problem, it solves an academic problem. I believe this is why a lot of people fall for the blockchain trap, it's interesting on an academic level, so they come to the conclusion that there must be value in there in there somewhere.
  - deweller 4y ago
not_enoch_wise 4y ago
Mass layoffs have hard-to-measure second- and third- order effects? Wall St. wouldn't reward something that was bad for a company in the long run!
carlsborg 4y ago
Facebook has been building out one of the most powerful GPU clusters on the planet [1] for AI research, since at least 2021. This blog post in Jan of 2022 says they were already doing NLP research on it "with the aim of one day training models with trillions of parameters.". Their 2017 cluster, had 22,000 NVIDIA V100s. [1] https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-rsc/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-rsc/
- esotericimpl 4y ago
  [dead]
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I expect that they aren’t wasting these resources, either. The first useful machine learning models I ever used were from Facebook research. There were other options at the time, but what they created was accessible, fast, and had very usable outputs. I suspect there is still more useful work in the area happening there.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The problem is that, given past Facebook/Meta reputation wrt privacy, who would trust their "AI cloud" if they monetize it like Microsoft is doing right now?
sarimkhalid 3y ago
As others have already pointed out, going "ultra pro max" on the metaverse was such a huge miscalculation by Zuck. I was so torn when Mark was pushing this idea like it was main thing now. The whole rebrand was flawed. Like you could just ask people all around you if they were going to use this meta crap and no one said yes (basic product/market fit) What really confirmed this awful strategy for me was when Sheryl (ex-COO FB) left the company. You have to understand, FBs leadership was beautifully segregated. The business side was handled by Sheryl (and team) while Zuck and Boz took care of product and technology. At its heart FaceBook was a good product (and viable business model), a few tweaks and changes would have made it sooo much better. Even though I deleted my account for personal reasons in 2017, FB fueled the post 2005 hacker culture and it is sad to see this state of the company that inspired so many of us.

579 points by pretext 4y ago

> Within Meta, there is pressure to demonstrate that people are working hard, two employees said. Intense scrutiny has come in recent workplace reviews, which the management consultancy firm Bain and Company is assisting. Workers, especially in middle management, are being asked to justify why their jobs are crucial to Meta’s goals. I thought scenes like this would only happen in movies like The Office. Never did I expect something like that to happen in real life. Corporate america is so dumb.

dumbotron 4y ago
FAANG hires 2 types of people: people who are good and people who are good at working the system. A lot of people who are good at working the system worked their way up to VP of very little, but even that comes with VP pay. It happens on the IC track, too. There are people who have big, handwavey ideas, but in hindsight, didn't deliver anything concrete other than google docs.

loeg 4y ago

> And for the first time, some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. What? The November 2022 layoffs were already 50:50 engineering:biz. The communication around the April layoffs has been that they will cut less in engineering groups (or at least, software engineering roles).

pengaru 4y ago

If only I could remember where I left that tiny violin...

pascalxus 4y ago

>>> "“They’re saying it’s ‘Hunger Games’ meets ‘Lord of the Flies,’ where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management.” It sounds like people are really insecure about themselves financially or egoistically. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to have your job or you can't go without one for a few a years. and if you're ego can't handle being laid off or fired, you may want to do something about that because jobs these days don't last much longer than 2-4 years at most places: just look at people's resumes on linkedIn.

klodolph 4y ago
Realistically speaking, it’s hard for many adults to get into a position where they can go without a job for a few years, even if you are at a high-paying company like Meta. A lot of Meta employees are at places with high cost of living, and you can try to live frugally, but frugality doesn’t solve your problems instantly. I think we can be sympathetic to the insecurity these people have without considering whether they put themselves in that position. There is a combination of internal (psychological) and external (environmental) factors at play here.
- JohnMakin 4y ago
  yea that comment is so out of touch. What % of US adults have enough savings to live 2-4 years on their current lifestyle? I'd bet it's very low. Maybe not as low as the subset making a FAANG income, but probably still low.
- pascalxus 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with sympathy. I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone who works at a software company. Those FANGs can be especially toxic. The fact is, how you spend your money, it's a choice, especially if you're single. For singles, no excuses. In my twenties, i rented a room, slept on a surfboard and ate oatmeal. If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could retire in 5-10 years.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    > If you combine that with a Meta salary, you could retire in 5-10 years. Could you elaborate on this? Do you think that other people SHOULD do this? Because I think we should be sympathetic to people who don’t live like ascetic monks, and it seems unkind to tell people that they could have retired if they lived like an ascetic monk.
  - greatpostman 4y ago
    No you can’t retire. Only if you don’t have a family, and even then you just get ten years of not working. And good luck attracting a good woman to have kids with while you sleep in a dump

etc-hosts 4y ago

It's only been a few years. Genentech dumped money into a hole for 20 years before having a viable product.

lisasays 4y ago
There's a difference developing stuff that's costly/risky but which people clearly need -- and hence, taking a longer than usual road to profitability ... And going all out building stuff, like the Metaverse -- that people just plainly don't want.

theGnuMe 4y ago

The layoffs will continue until the stock (market) improves.

gspencley 4y ago

Funny, I thought working at Meta would be the thing that would create a morale crises at Meta.

henry2023 4y ago

The morale crisis should have come when they understood that their work directly and negatively impacts on our younger generation’s mental health.

Giorgi 4y ago

As AI takes over, it is going to get worse.

hendersoon 4y ago

Meta has always had a morale crisis, recently exacerbated by Cambridge Analytica and the like. People wanted to work there because of the money. Flat-out. Once the pay is equivalent to the rest of the industry and the extravagant perks are gone, wouldn't you prefer to work somewhere at least moderately less evil? I certainly would.

standardUser 4y ago

I still can't believe the Metaverse is the core strategy of a major global corporation. I've been deep in technology my entire life and I honestly couldn't even tell you what the Metaverse is. I can talk all day long about AI or crypto or online gaming or how to build web apps but gun to my head, I could not give even a rough definition of what the metaverse is or is supposed to be.

krapp 4y ago
Have you tried googling it?
- croes 4y ago
  Which of the dozens of definitions is the right one?
  - krapp 4y ago
    I'm not aware of dozens of definitions, at least not which apply to the context of this particular thread. Maybe you should start at the Wikipedia page[0] for what is commonly accepted as the general definition. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
    - standardUser 4y ago
      Based on what I just read, I think it would take significant effort to outline the precise differences between the Metaverse and the Internet. Kind of like "Web 2.0" which was just a bizarre way of saying "The internet, but it has changed gradually over time, as most thing do", as if we needed to be reminded that technologies are not eternally static.
    - croes 4y ago
      It's a buzzword that is used for multiple similar things without a clear definition: "Broadly speaking, the technologies companies refer to when they talk about “the metaverse” can include virtual reality—characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you're not playing—as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. Virtual worlds—such as aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones—have started referring to themselves as “the metaverse.” Many companies that have hopped on board the metaverse bandwagon also envision some sort of new digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. In the more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it's interoperable, allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another, though this is harder than it sounds" https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-the-metaverse/

JohnMakin 4y ago

It seems to me like it'd be extraordinarily difficult at a company whose product is supposed to "connect people" and bring people together, while even from the outside it's transparently built to extract the most data and dollars it possibly can from its users, often at their great expense (see teen suicide numbers and depression being linked to social media usage). While internally, they don't even pretend to care. For a while this was probably easy for "metamates" to ignore due to the astoundingly inflated salaries compared to the rest of the non-FAANG tech sector, but when you start wantonly laying off massive chunks of the company based on poor decisions you made pursuing this "goal," I mean, it would seem to be that nearly anyone with a soul would be feeling demoralized by now.

anticristi 4y ago

I can't help wondering if Meta is suffering death by GDPR and co. Meta really had only one revenue stream: ads. Given the recent GDPR fines, it's clear that personalized ads are increasingly illegal in the EU. Other jurisdictions will follow suit (e.g. CCPA). Contrast that with Google, who, although makes tons of ad money, had other revenue streams: cloud, workspace, YouTube Joins, pay, App Store, etc.

SimonPStevens 4y ago

I wonder if the visible white patch around Zuckerberg's eyes in the main photo are genuinely because he's been wearing a VR headset for 12 hours a day testing the metaverse or if they added it in Photoshop to make it look like he had.

asdfman123 4y ago

The comments in this thread baffles me, because I thought the Metaverse was doomed from the start, and I think the disconnect is many people believe in the "great man theory." Mark Zuckerberg didn't create social media: he rode the social media wave. He was the best-positioned competitor, which counts for a lot, but the other conditions had to be there first. Some seem to think he willed social media into existence -- including himself -- which suggests he'd be able to will the Metaverse into existence too. But no amount of investment or strategy will make a large fraction of the population want something.

Vapormac 4y ago

https://archive.is/RHz9R https://archive.is/RHz9R (No paywall)

yumraj 4y ago

How's the morale at Twitter?

jti107 4y ago
fantastic! everyone left is hardcore

jhatemyjob 4y ago

Ok so I actually work at Meta and I hope they do more layoffs. There are so many redundant teams and useless features being pushed. After the last layoff my job got so much easier because I wasn't constantly fighting people trying to ship dumb features that pollute the codebase. And even if I get laid off there's a fat severance package waiting for me. It's a win-win.

jfranche 4y ago

[dead]

graupel 4y ago

https://archive.is/RHz9R https://archive.is/RHz9R

themagician 4y ago

People look at Meta with these bizarro rose-colored glasses, as if it was once a company with some nobel mission that lost its way. Facebook, from the very beginning, knew what it was doing once they found the "secret". They found, by accident, the ability tap into people's insecurities and exploit that to extract data and then serve ads that further insecurities. They found an emotional loop that printed dollars. People gave up an entire lifetime of information for free so they could feel connected. The Metaverse is just trying to get lightning to strike twice. It will probably get there. As people become more isolated they will become more insecure and place an even higher value on social interaction. VR sucks. Flat screens and fixed focal point lenses result in a huge out of focus area—you move your eyes within the headset and you can't focus—which feels unnatural. Eventually we will solve this, and once we do it will go mainstream. If you can look past the crappy optics and you log into VRChat today it feels… good. It feels like you are actually interacting with people. It simply feels good. Most people just can't look past the poor optics. You put a $2000 headset on the average person and their response is always, "Cool, but it's kinda heavy. Also, why is it so blurry?" Someone will solve this, eventually. Meta is banking on exactly what made Facebook. They will create a space that makes you feel good, and then get you to give up even more information and see even more ads designed explicitly to manipulate you because the advertiser knows so much about you. Honestly, it's a brilliant idea to try and do the same thing again but harder. Possible it's too early, but if you have billions to blow why not. Right now it's a product that only caters to the most socially isolated individuals. That will change. Why did my parents join Facebook? They did it because they were lonely. It's why the Facebook audience is now so old. It took them a while to come up with a UI that was easy enough for old people to use it, but they did. They are trying to do the same with VR. There's a pretty good chance of success in my opinion.

jareklupinski 4y ago
> you log into VRChat today it feels… good. It feels like you are actually interacting with people. That's exactly it: you're actually interacting with people. In the beginning, Facebook had _only_ people: your friends. If you logged into Facebook then and had 0 friends, arguably nothing would happen. Today, only about every 3rd post is by a person, even if you have hundreds of friends. There probably is a ratio of algorithmically-generated v.s human content that is acceptable to their users.... but I'm chasing the 100% too :)

annadane 4y ago

I think people are missing the point when they call Metaverse a 'misstep' because it implies Zuckerberg was a good actor who just happened to get this one thing wrong... if you look through his history of things like forced Whatsapp sharing (plus Onavo), Free Basics, all of the shitty things the company does... the Metaverse was never a good faith effort and people need to understand that; newsflash, he's not a shining example of what a good person is (And the whole stealing Facebook from other people in the first place, anyway)

symlinkk 4y ago

I honestly don’t understand why VR hasn’t caught on. Every time I let someone try my Quest for the first time their minds are blown. It’s very cool technology and seems like the next logical step for video games.

Err_Eek 4y ago
I was asking myself the same question. The conclusion I came to is that the getting your mind blown phase doesn't keep you coming back again and again -- it's why games like Minecraft/League of Legends have much higher player counts than say The Last of Us, or other certified mind-blowing games. I have a Quest 2 and a Steam Deck. Definitely my Steam Deck is getting more use, though it's initial "wow" factor was smaller.
adamwong246 4y ago
I fear and despise the technology. Every VR experience I have tried feels less like the metaverse and more like I have slipped into the backrooms- a liminal waking nightmare. Perhaps I'm too old but I fear for the day that it's no longer a niche toy and we are at long last _compelled_ to wear a VR headset. At that point, adios reality. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” except instead of a boot it's a Oculus rift thats been surgically attached to your skull.
reportgunner 4y ago
Probably because that experience of trying a VR headset is 80% of what it provides. Once the novelty wears off you find out there is not much to do with a VR headset for extended periods of time.
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  I think this is close to it. The challenge is the actual sticky applications are a lot less sexy than the ones that are like a sugar hit. When the novelty IS the value, you are always going to struggle with retention. There are real applications where the value is more than that, but they are never the ones you would show to someone in the first 5 minutes because they aren't nearly as impressive.

steve76 4y ago

[dead]

roflyear 4y ago

The absentee boss thing is real across the industry right now. What are these managers doing? Consulting? Working other jobs? They are certainly not engaged at work.

dahwolf 4y ago

For close to a decade now, people have been insisting that Facebook is in trouble because young folks don't like it. I've always rejected that idea because usage kept growing regardless, young users or not. Something's different now though, something is in the air. I genuinely believe we've achieved peak social media already, and it's downhill from here. Usage is close to maximized. The amount of distractions one can tolerate in the form of ads has breached tolerance levels. There's the repetitiveness. Social media is now > 15 years old. Reading content on a daily basis even if you find said content mildly enjoyable is getting very "meh". Influencers, activists, scammers, spammers have developed a wide array of tactics that piggy-back on outrage algorithms that make feeds upsetting instead of pleasant. I think an increasing amount of people are realizing that social media sucks. You can do without it or do with less of it, and this only improves your life. I don't expect a super steep decline, rather a lengthy slow one. For sure not any meaningful growth, other than the occasional sideways switch. That definitely feels like an existential problem for Facebook.

adamwong246 4y ago
Reminds me of the video game crash of the 80's. Even tho the tech was advancing rapidly, American game makers kept shoveling crap into the customer's mouths and eventually the customers vomited.
Nathanba 4y ago
Personally I don't think that social media will ever fall out of fashion because it's a core human biological need. All Facebook has to do is to keep up with the latest trend, whatever that may be. Maybe people will rather livechat than post static content. Or maybe they rather sit around in a 3d virtual environment. Who knows. But they'll always want to connect with others. Maybe they'll even prefer talking to an AI than to humans but that's still effectively a social interaction that Facebook can provide and connect. They'll simply pivot towards letting you create your own AI friends.
- dahwolf 4y ago
  There's a pretty big gap between socializing/communicating as a core human need and this taking shape in the form of current social media. Which didn't exist for 99.999% of our history and is in many ways unnatural.

deleted 4y ago

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ggm 4y ago

VR has a time lag issue which I personally think is unfixable. I do not believe we have systems which can react in real-time without something morally akin to an uncanny valley glitch, somewhere in the processing loop. Make it 120hz. make it HD. make it as good as you like, I am really sure that for the forseeable future computing ALL the asynchronous real-world event changes and arranging for them to arrive at the right time, compared to your own movements is functionally impossible. A later thread speaks to the specific torture test: simulate being in a stadium for all 100,000 people and show ME the one person who is waving a giant hand I want to look at, out of 1000, against the game play on the field. You've now got to martial 100,000 events, render them into my view, and focus on a random singleton in real-time against game play, no matter how I move my head. Simulataneously, for everyone, with other async events taking place beside me, or in another sense-space. Either you glitch the VR experience, or you put me on delay. Zuckerberg swung the company to deliver an experience which was never going to score 8 out of 10 for average user experience. It was always heading to 3 out of 10. He should have put it into a sub-division and spent his personal risk money on it, not bet the company.

1letterunixname 4y ago
VR is a graveyard category like flying cars, Juicero, and perpetual motion.
- ggm 4y ago
  Almost any demonstrator I have seen of it in semi-industrial or science use, is as a PR tool. It is indeed fantastic to be able to fly through the wiring diagram of a 747 or rotate a molecule in real-time, but what you're doing is pedagogical at best, and probably promotional no matter what. Architects can design in 2D perfectly well. Immersion is good for selling designs, but so is a cardboard model on the boardroom table, and if you make the sale, somebody gets to keep it as a tchotke. "what is the sun angle and shading like at midday and evening" you can do with packages off the shelf. "show me now" is all you've got in VR

nikolasdimi 4y ago

It's disheartening to hear :) It also proves that people who predicted this for the metaverse were right. I thought i was the only one not getting it because i am old :) Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has declared that 2023 will be the “year of efficiency” at his company. So far, efficiency has translated into mass layoffs.

zmmmmm 4y ago

Everyone seems to be reacting to this as if it's being done out of necessity due to financial pressures. I see it much more as Zuckerberg on a mission. Facebook is doing OK as far as we know. Neither the metaverse failing (too early for its financial impact to be a factor) nor Facebook's performance at surface level are driving this. It seems to me more like Zuckerberg is taking back the company after the Sandberg years and molding it in his own image again - sharp and scrappy and focused. Will be very interesting to see if he can pull it off, or if as everyone is anticipating, it's just going to crater morale to the point where nobody good is left there.

EchoReflection 3y ago

the faster Meta crumbles into oblivion the better. Zuckface and Twitbook and Crapchat and all the other "social" media platforms are literally just data-harvesting programs that are, like the fashion industry, just trying to make money (which is fine) by manipulating human behavior and perceptions/ideas about what "normal" is.

bullen 4y ago

[flagged]

pevey 4y ago
Just open the link in a private/incognito window
- WakoMan12 4y ago
  private/incognito window is for pr0n not ycomnews
neom 4y ago
You can go to archive.is and put the url in. Braves "speedreader" mode typically works too, I use it a lot Here is the bypass url for you: https://archive.is/ta5js https://archive.is/ta5js

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

Workers at Facebook 10 years ago: I’m glad my company isn’t like Microsoft. Workers now: I wish my company was like Microsoft.

tomrod 4y ago
Aye! Meta tried recruiting in the ML space. The hook? Half of the interviewers were Microsoft alumni that had a ton of money thrown at them. I wonder where those folks are today.
- prepend 4y ago
  Probably back at Microsoft.
  - romanovcode 4y ago
    MS bet on OpenAI is one of the biggest tech success stories of this decade for sure. Now everyone wants a pie of it but it seems that they are way behind for some reason (for example Google Bard is nothing compared to OpenAI implementation)
    - red_admiral 4y ago
      Yes, it's quite ironic isn't it that the big AI progress is being made not by the cool kids at Alphabet and Meta and the like, but in a place backed by "boring" old Microsoft. Whatever next - Bing becoming actually useful, perhaps?
      - threeseed 4y ago
        The fundamental research in the AI space (that OpenAI depends so much on) originally came from Alphabet and Meta. They just never thought to productise it.
        theGnuMe 4y ago

grej 4y ago

https://archive.is/ta5js https://archive.is/ta5js

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tyingq 4y ago

The mixed messaging is pretty stunning. Pushing the metaverse, but simultaneously pushing "be at the office". Then seniors leaders spending more time on LLM projects than on the metaverse concept. All from their new remote homes rather than the office.

brookst 4y ago
No defense of meta, but this doesn’t seem like a contradiction. If they thought the metaverse was done and ready to use for work, they wouldn’t need to invest in building it. Seems a bit like wondering why the construction management team doesn’t just use the office building they’re constructing rather than a trailer.
- tyingq 4y ago
  I was assuming the metaverse was an extension/improvement on doing things remotely, rather than a pre-requisite for it to work at all. Meaning you would have to believe remote is a solid concept to start with. And, there's the obvious contradiction that working remote seems fine for a lot of the senior leadership.
- btown 4y ago
  If you’re $13.7 billion into a project and can’t even dogfood it internally, you’re at least $13.6 billion beyond where you should be.
  - EFreethought 4y ago
    About $6 billion for everything above the waist, $6 billion for legs. Toes: another $6 billion, and the world is Meta's oyster.
deleted 4y ago
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loeg 4y ago
There's also mixed messaging about being at the office. They're cutting transportation programs and in-office benefits. Even reducing the variety of sodas stocked in the kitchens (you would think there isn't much cost saving there).

endisneigh 4y ago

Meta is a great example of why you need a really good vision and execution. Imagine an alternative world where instead of acquiring Oculus and later pivoting to the metaverse, Zuckerboard went all in on AI (LLM weren't a thing quite yet then), and instead rebranded the company Fabula (tale in latin), and developed AI technology to accelerate their original mission of connecting people. Though it’s true Facebook has an amazing AI team, it’s my understanding none of it has really been turned into product. In that regard they have been more like Google and less like OpenAI They likely would've created something similar to LLMs by themselves in short order, but in the worst case could have made their own LLM after the Google paper. You could imagine all sort of neat affordances given by an AI: - Friendship level suggestions on what to do - Meetup work, suggested on similar likes - Improved suggestions etc I bet that hypothetical pivot would've been better than the metaverse. At this point (2023) you might imagine things iterating to the point where users have some sort of assist that helps facilitate engagement with your facebook friends (with ads, of course, hah).

ripvanwinkle 4y ago
Part of the Meta's problem is this spiel about connecting people. Conversations internally are all about monetizing users and not losing any revenue due to new privacy regulations. Apart from the Metaverse which is also cloaked in "connecting people" there is no effort to take the technology and capabilities in the company and conquer new domains. Like Google getting into Office collaboration and Cloud computing etc. So that spiel about "connecting people" while being a bunch of whitewash is also restricting possibilities for the company
lostmsu 4y ago
> Zuckerboard went all in on AI Hindsight is 20/20
suzzer99 4y ago
The problem is I don't need any of this stuff and I know a ton of people who feel the same way. If FB's timeline had a chronological option like twitter, I would switch to it tomorrow, then mute people who bugged me. Every algorithm seems to end up optimizing for engagement, which basically means car wrecks, conspiracy theories, and other outrageous controversial stuff. Youtube will never stop recommending Jordan Peterson, no matter how many times you vote it down, because the algorithm has figured out that if it can get you into JP, it will open up a whole new world of engagement as you head further and further down the alt-right rabbit hole. So it's worth a periodic try at the hail mary, even for users who previously showed active aversion to JP.

neom 4y ago

The problem I have with articles like this is, well, sample size. They talked to 9 former and current employees, out of 60,000 employees. I'm no fan of Meta, but is it really fair to say there is a "crisis" of morale at a company with such a tiny sample size?

waylandsmithers 4y ago
Yeah, Facebook is just the company that everyone loves to hate, and the NYT often joins in the chorus. This one seems especially agenda-laden, however: > absentee leadership, > Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, is on parental leave after the birth of his third child > The company’s stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago This is pretty disingenuous, considering nearly all tech stocks fell off, and Meta stock has more than doubled since bottoming out at around 90/share several months ago. The metaverse is stupid and nobody wants it! > While the company has sold 20 million virtual reality headsets — more than any other company producing similar tech —
- roland35 4y ago
  It's not just Meta, journalists and commenters even on tech sites like Ars Technica or Verge seem to love piling on any negative coverage about working at big tech companies (Google, Uber, even Apple occasionally). I think Meta and Google are particularly disliked by journalists due to both specifically cutting into news industries. But I think a bigger part of it is the idea that software engineers are overpaid and spoiled brats!
  - sahila 4y ago
    Perhaps the simplest explanation is these kinds of articles get lots of clicks and views, I doubt most writers have a big agenda when starting an article like this.
ghaff 4y ago
Even if you have access to employee survey data, what constitutes a "morale crisis" exactly? So a variety of metrics are down after layoffs, general online negativity, and bad press. In other news, water is wet. And doubtless execs are concerned. But is that really a "morale crisis" or just what to expect in a belt-tightening era at just about any company (and certainly one whose employees expected great stock appreciation and job stability and now don't have either)?

mmmmmbop 4y ago

The Metaverse was always such a bad direction. At the time, I was really unsure about my intuition -- I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it's worth pivoting his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have some data to back that up. As it stands, my intuition (and everybody else's) turned out to be right. It's been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto. Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit fractal. At the height of the crypto boom, I was beginning to doubt my conclusions and started to think that perhaps the societal nature of crypto is a force in itself. Like religion, if enough people believe in it, it becomes reality to some extent. But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along. Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It's clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be, and that they are providing clear value right away. It's no wonder that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards it. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company pivot two years too early -- I'm sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot to today, it'd be towards generative AI.

amjnsx 4y ago
What made you decide crypto was bullshit all along? It has had quite a few booms as well as busts, and various scams and frauds for good measure. As far as I know the last bust wasn’t much different to the ones that came before it.
mettamage 4y ago
To be fair, when Facebook was created there was no data either. Data can be useful but I have yet to hear a story where data played a pivotal role in creating a successful startup
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  Hot or Not was a popular site, and Facebook was created to be that but exclusively for college students. It was called Facemash.
- baremetal 4y ago
  There was indeed data when facebook started. It was called myspace.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> Mr. Zuckerberg has made a big bet on the metaverse, an immersive online world. This is one of those "Were there any adults in the room when the decision was discussed?" instances that I see all over the place, these days. Like 3D televisions, immersive 3D avatar worlds have been tried -more than once. They work great for games, but not for real-life stuff. There are a few "corner cases," where it's being supported (I think there.com is still a thing), but otherwise, it only exists in the minds of SF writers.

draw_down 4y ago
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loeg 4y ago
Where were the adults in the room when Zuckerberg was given supervoting stock? He has the majority of voting shares in the company and can basically do whatever he wants.
aksss 4y ago
Most tech people have a vision of what VR “should be”, but perhaps not as many fully appreciate that it’s a very, very difficult problem that people have been chipping away at for decades with relatively modest gains. Oculus is exponentially better than the Nintendo Virtual Boy, but like Virtual Boy the current capabilities fall very short of the vision and ultimately disappoint after one is confronted with the limitations, nearer at hand than the marketing hype would have one believe. Given this, the Meta pivot seemed like the move of someone caught up in their own marketing/bullshit but unable to get their own bearings on the matter (which would have checked the hype cycle). To some extent Zuck’s empire can shape the world at least temporarily, but nothing gets us past the fact that the tech just isn’t able to meet expectations yet. So there’s this vacuum or hole in Meta’s strat that leaves them rapidly needing to move the tech forward at a miraculous pace (which I wouldn’t bet on happening) or “re-pivoting” (de-pivoting?).
Balgair 4y ago
I think it would be great for pay-per-view events. Imagine being on the 50 yard line of the superbowl for $10. Imagine being in the stands of your kids volleyball game from your hotel room on a work trip. Live events, large or small, are the killer app, I think.

podgib 4y ago

> the cuts expected this month will be the first to affect tech departments, including engineers, which has surprised employees Huh? The earlier layoffs definitely affected tech. I know of a bunch of former colleagues in engineering roles that were laid off in the first round. Sure, recruiting was affected more, which makes sense when hiring was reduced to almost zero, but this is very much not the first time engineers will be included in layoffs.

ozmodiar 4y ago
Back in a previous life in a chemical R&D lab the company did layoffs and claimed to the media that it was all to marketing and administration. In the lab we lost about 50% of our researchers but weren't allowed to talk to anyone about it. I'm guessing companies really want to make it look like layoffs aren't impacting the people responsible for the product, and feed questionable data to that effect.
phyrex 4y ago
Yeah that’s nonsense. Last round was about 50% engineering!
- tru3_power 4y ago
  Seems like typical media bias against FB. Don’t forget- FB was bullying media companies for a while. Now they are getting a chance to strike back.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Huh? How is claiming that Meta hasn't cut any Engineering roles yet bias against Meta? If anything it's painting Meta in a more positive light.
    - zuminator 4y ago
      The misleading implication is that now suddenly Meta is in panic mode and making unprecedentedly drastic cuts, as opposed to just ratcheting its previous layoff policies.

MangoCoffee 4y ago

a lot of big techs doing layoffs. you will find a lot of ex-employees got something to say about their former employer.

romanovcode 4y ago

The article does not state it. But I wonder - do these layoffs are from Metaverse project? If so, what would those people expect? Did they really believe in the project when they applied and worked on it?

theGnuMe 4y ago
I would want to be on a team that builds (or uses) AI tools that can be used to build out the metaverse. That seems like a balanced approach.

JCM9 4y ago

You don’t find out who is great at business when everything is up and to the right, you find out when the market is rough. The current market is already doing a good job of shaking out companies and executives that really weren’t very good but that was being masked by a market where you had to try hard not to succeed.

psniff 4y ago

This is a poorly reported article. 1) The author seems to think 2 rounds of layoffs have already been executed and now a third is coming, when actually the 2nd round of layoffs is still being executed. 2) The author mentions twice that the coming round of layoffs will affect engineering for the first time; this is not true -- thousands of eng were laid off in the first round. 3) The author mentions that the stock price has dropped 43% from its peak as evidence that Meta faces a precarious future. No mention that META has been one of the hottest tech stocks in 23Q1, gaining more than 75%. I'm no Meta apologist, and this is really a "dog bites man" story anyway ("layoffs announced; morale bad") but I don't really trust this author's general reporting competence.

jmacd 4y ago

In a comment I made about 18 months ago, I noted that Facebook's insufficient investment in anything useful would hold them back. The true cost of the Metaverse isn't solely the capital needed for development; it's also the opportunity cost that will become apparent in the future. What aren't they doing that they could be? There is also another aspect to consider. The swift expansion of generative AI is driving the transition from a Social Graph to a Content Graph. Online users are now more interested in engaging, up-to-date content rather than keeping up with their friends' activities. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube pioneered this trend, while Twitter's timeline modifications serve as a functional yet imperfect example. Content discovery now takes precedence over static friend lists. The core principle that Facebook was built on is gradually crumbling. This isn't just about Apple's privacy policies or regulatory constraints; it's a fundamental shift in user behavior. The primary reason people visit Facebook—connecting with people they know—is now at odds with their main online activity: consuming content from strangers. Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past social connections. Facebook is attempting to adapt, but their efforts only diminish the platform's value for average users. Instagram's discovery page and Reels are examples, but the latter pales in comparison to TikTok. Facebook's endeavors in short-form video are likely a futile game of catch-up, a classic innovator's dilemma. The Metaverse's introduction seemed like a desperate, last-minute attempt from the C-suite to save face. Anyone who has worked at a high-profile tech company has likely seen this tactic before: weak financial quarters lead to premature product announcements. The all-encompassing nature of the Metaverse announcement signals that something is amiss. It's only more futile now.

helen___keller 4y ago
> Facebook has become a platform for discovering uncomfortable opinions of acquaintances and realizing the irrelevance of past social connections. At some point, the social internet started existing primarily to make people feel good about their own strongly held controversial opinions. Why would I go on Facebook, where the experience is seeing an old friend hold some dumb half baked opinion they picked up from Fox/CNN then bicker with them, when I could go to twitter and watch the top influencer in my ring dunk on the top influencer in the competitions ring, making myself instantly feel more right?

jfranche 4y ago

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Entinel 4y ago

I would think working at Meta at all would be a morale crisis.

nonethewiser 4y ago

This is totally an aside, but Im not into crypto and have a fairly negative connotation with it but I don’t necessarily think crypto is bullshit. I think the problem with crypto is that it misjudges the world, or is at least positioned for a very cynical version of the world that doesn’t currently exist. Is crypto kept alive on evangelism? Yes. Not really that useful at the moment (and maybe never will be)? Yes. Has lots of pump and dump, scams, bad people doing bad stuff? People who have no clue what they’re talking about spewing bullshit? Resounding yes. But I don’t think it’s bullshit because it does solve a real problem - verifying transactions independently. But of course there are trade offs with this, such as bitcoin’s power consumption. The disconnect comes from crypto people misjudging the world. The current financial system simply isn’t so bad to require all the weird trade offs of crypto.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
Agreed with all of the above, but crypto !== bitcoin, and bitcoin is basically one of the few last holdouts using Proof of Work consensus at this point. I don't know if it will ever be displaced because there are so many irrational people in the space, but whatever happens with crypto, I hope consensus mechanisms that aren't energy-hungry displace proof of work.
VHRanger 4y ago
Bitcoin's power consumption isn't a "tradeoff". It's just as centralized as proof of stake systems. Bitcoin's power consumption is just appealing to the religious aspect of the network : if we changed it, it would go against the original design. Even though it burns 1% of world energy consumption for that stupidity.
sethd 4y ago
It doesn't solve a real problem, it solves an academic problem. I believe this is why a lot of people fall for the blockchain trap, it's interesting on an academic level, so they come to the conclusion that there must be value in there in there somewhere.
- deweller 4y ago

not_enoch_wise 4y ago

Mass layoffs have hard-to-measure second- and third- order effects? Wall St. wouldn't reward something that was bad for a company in the long run!

carlsborg 4y ago

Facebook has been building out one of the most powerful GPU clusters on the planet [1] for AI research, since at least 2021. This blog post in Jan of 2022 says they were already doing NLP research on it "with the aim of one day training models with trillions of parameters.". Their 2017 cluster, had 22,000 NVIDIA V100s. [1] https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-rsc/ https://ai.facebook.com/blog/ai-rsc/

esotericimpl 4y ago
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steve_adams_86 4y ago
I expect that they aren’t wasting these resources, either. The first useful machine learning models I ever used were from Facebook research. There were other options at the time, but what they created was accessible, fast, and had very usable outputs. I suspect there is still more useful work in the area happening there.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The problem is that, given past Facebook/Meta reputation wrt privacy, who would trust their "AI cloud" if they monetize it like Microsoft is doing right now?

sarimkhalid 3y ago

As others have already pointed out, going "ultra pro max" on the metaverse was such a huge miscalculation by Zuck. I was so torn when Mark was pushing this idea like it was main thing now. The whole rebrand was flawed. Like you could just ask people all around you if they were going to use this meta crap and no one said yes (basic product/market fit) What really confirmed this awful strategy for me was when Sheryl (ex-COO FB) left the company. You have to understand, FBs leadership was beautifully segregated. The business side was handled by Sheryl (and team) while Zuck and Boz took care of product and technology. At its heart FaceBook was a good product (and viable business model), a few tweaks and changes would have made it sooo much better. Even though I deleted my account for personal reasons in 2017, FB fueled the post 2005 hacker culture and it is sad to see this state of the company that inspired so many of us.