While I do think it is tempting and broadly correct to have the discussion about these layoff rounds being partially social contagion among the C-suite class, n

While I do think it is tempting and broadly correct to have the discussion about these layoff rounds being partially social contagion among the C-suite class, needless RTO, and the end of 0% interest rates, we should also keep in mind that Facebook/Meta appears to be egregiously mismanaged. They burned billions of dollars and years of dev time on a product that was a bad joke at both the implementation and vision level, all while their mainstay products that actually make money are decaying in real time. Facebook is a product fully relegated to regurgitating content from meme pages to 40+ year olds + getting into extremely uninformed political arguments. It is a zombie product with no hope of revival. Instagram is better but is still showing shakiness in its business model and audience retention. And they can't monetize Whatsapp without ruining it. So they had to make a leap, but they chose an area (VR video games) that they had no pre-existing experience in and got nowhere in the 9 years since they bought Oculus. Oculus was the cutting edge in VR, so one must imagine that they also squandered that talent given the state Horizon Worlds is in.