[HN Gopher] Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs
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Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs
Author : slyall
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-04-18 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| dangrover wrote:
| I was there 2016-2022. The hiring boom in 2020 was definitely
| palpable. Entire vast orgs of teams who had no context on the
| problem they were solving, previous efforts, etc, because they
| were all so new.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Job market continues to be terrible... Ugh...
| tootie wrote:
| The job market is still pretty strong. It was wildly overheated
| in 2021.
| sberens wrote:
| Hm, my tech job tracker[0] shows that it's probably one of
| the worst hiring markets ever. Where do you see that the
| market is still strong?
|
| [0] https://www.hnhiringtrends.com/
| thehumanmeat wrote:
| Dec '22 Master's grad + math undergrad here. 4.0 GPA,
| research + internship experience. 4 months of applications
| and only 1 interview. Might as well apply to a shredder.
| 0zemp1c wrote:
| sure, if you feel like applying to the companies claiming
| unfilled positions:
|
| Chipotle, Mcd's, Target, Walmart
|
| etc
| breatheoften wrote:
| Anybody want to predict how the market will react to this?
|
| My take is that it will be a negative response. They've already
| shed a lot of workforce -- at this point they are still facing
| revenue growth loss more than they'll save in costs from reduced
| headcount -- and I think it's unlikely they'll be able to fire
| folks into a convincing story about future profit growth ...
|
| To me it's clear they are no longer a machine able to turn ever
| expanding quantities of engineering talent into ever ever
| expanding monetary growth ...
|
| so what's left to value in their overall organizational brand?
|
| Personally I think they have an enormous amount of technical and
| organizational talent still in their ranks -- but ... why? Why
| will they stay and try hard to chase after whatever the next
| gravy fad train might be? Seems like it won't be the meta verse
| ... and if the next fad is really going to be "ai" -- could there
| really be enough talent that can really stomache the thought of
| allowing instagram to be the one to control the worlds first
| super intelligent agi ...?
| nemo44x wrote:
| > so what's left to value in their overall organizational
| brand?
|
| They have the worlds greatest dataset of everyone - their
| posts, their photos, their social graph. Now train generative
| AI on this.
|
| They can build personal and unique AI products that no one else
| can at their scale because they've sent the last 20 years
| getting to know everything about everyone.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In theory true. In practice, I'm not convinced that the
| company Meta actually can do this.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I think the markets have already priced this in, so there will
| be basically no reaction. Zuck has more or less announced the
| cuts already.
|
| "but ... why?" they have a ton of talent because they pay top
| of band and they staff their workforce with great employees.
| Great talent wants to be paid well and wants to work with great
| talent, meta has both.
|
| For what its worth, meta has more employees now than they had
| in Q1 2022, and these next rounds of layoffs put them at
| staffing levels of like Q3 2021. The reality is that Meta and
| other huge companies grew headcount faster than revenue, and
| need to unwind some decisions they made.
| fullshark wrote:
| The market already reacted this is old news
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > Anybody want to predict how the market will react to this?
|
| I suppose the markets have already reacted to this. This has
| been announced a couple of months ago.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I guess it's good to hear that Meta is still around.
| nostromo wrote:
| We're on the edge of an AI boom, and our tech giants are cutting
| rather than investing. This seems like a bad strategy.
| btown wrote:
| I'm reminded about the quote from The Incredibles: "When
| everyone's super... no one will be."
|
| When smaller AI startups start, say, showing more relevant
| search results than Google does, and more personally relevant
| posts than Meta - and IMO this is highly likely, since FAANG
| have much more brand reputation to protect than those startups
| and will necessarily move cautiously - perceptions will start
| to rise that they are no longer the superpowers. But their
| valuation multiples are based on them being the _only_
| superpowers in their respective spaces. So if they want to
| preserve shareholder value, _and_ they can 't depend on hype,
| they'll have to cut aggressively so they can at least show
| strong earnings per share.
| geodel wrote:
| I mean this is the time for companies with great strategy to
| hire laid off folks. And VCs with great strategy can fund them
| if companies are startup and lack resources.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| They're doing both.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'm ignorantly confident that no one in AI-related
| divisions/projects are being cut at Meta.
| aiappreciator wrote:
| Meta made the dumb decision to invest in VR, rather than AI.
| Those giant and expensive VR teams (Or the devs who made
| horizon worlds...) aren't going to easily transition into AI.
|
| AI generated content is the real core of metaverses, not VR
| goggles. Hence Nvidia is actually making the right bet on its
| 'omniverse' infrastructure.
|
| Nvidia has made no layoffs, and I don't expect any within the
| next 5 years.
| abeppu wrote:
| In FAIRness, their investments in AI research have been
| significant in absolute terms. What may be lacking is the
| connection between research and actual products, but I think
| that's true everywhere. Though I agree VR has been a
| distraction, I think it's misleading to say the investment
| was in VR "rather than AI"; it's been in addition to.
| yreg wrote:
| Meta had their own successes in AI research. And I wouldn't
| be so sure the goggles are going to stay irrelevant.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| VR googles absolutely are core for Meta as they want to own
| the next (physical) platform.
|
| They've learned the hard way the cost of not owning the
| hardware layer.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Ironic that their VR goggles run Android
| ShamelessC wrote:
| For the love of God, how many times have they done this at this
| point?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Three.
| mattnewton wrote:
| And the stock ticks up every time
| [deleted]
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| This article is still about the 2nd layoff, just confirming
| the concrete time looks like where as previously just known
| to be sometime around end of april / early may
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Ah, yes, you're right. I didn't realize they announced a
| two step layoff in March. So, two, I guess.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| It's a 3-step layoff actually. March, April, and May.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Every single round of layoffs generates several stories:
|
| 1. Announcement
|
| 2. Identifying who is affected
|
| 3. Start of the actual action
|
| 4. Morale is affect this or that way
|
| So we hear each action in painful detail. Not as painful detail
| as the folks getting laid off of course. But each story hits
| the front page.
| paxys wrote:
| Facebook/Meta has done exactly one mass layoff in its history
| (in November 2022), and this is the second.
| beambot wrote:
| I've always heard the adage "cut once, cut deep" to avoid
| repeated destruction of morale. Anyone care to speculate about
| Meta's rationale behind repeated cuts?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The rationale is probably something like, "oops; well crap".
| Meta hasn't done this very often.
| fullsend wrote:
| Layoffs may be needed. But there should be a healthy dose of
| executives included for making those hiring decisions. And they
| should do it all at once. Doing it in waves is absolutely brutal.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I worked for about a decade in the semiconductor manufacturing
| industry, at a time (90's) when it was mostly moving out of
| Silicon Valley (and then overseas). There was a clear pattern
| that companies that hadn't done layoffs very often, were
| clumsier (which often felt like "brutal" to those affected),
| and the ones who had done it through several previous downturns
| were less clumsy at it.
|
| One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should
| do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next
| recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will
| need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and
| need to do it again.
| mikrl wrote:
| >they should do it all at once
|
| When I was last laid off, the meeting was concurrent with my
| friend on another team.
|
| I was not laid off by my manager but my 2x skip; other members
| of my team were laid off, presumably at the same time, by
| someone else in our CoC.
|
| So based on these observations, I think for security etc
| reasons you need to lay people off all at once in batches. Too
| easy for lag to create 'insider/outsider threat' situations.
|
| Obviously my points are redundant if you just do it over email.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I was talking to a neighbor who works at AWS. Asked how it was
| going and he said so far so good "I've survived 3 layoffs so
| far". And I was like, "3 layoffs? I thought there was only one
| so far?" and he replied that there have been a couple others
| that weren't publicized so much.
| abledon wrote:
| but how much did they hire in the last 2-3 years?
| zwieback wrote:
| So from 86000 last year they'll be going to 60000ish this year?
| That is pretty severe. For those of us in mature industries
| cyclic layoffs are just how things are but 25% shrinkage is
| scary.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Returning to 2020 levels. Says something about the hiring
| frenzy that went on.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| It would show a decoupling between revenue and headcount,
| which is certainly bad news for tech workers. Meta's revenue
| in 2022 was 35% higher than 2020, 65% higher than 2019. If
| tech companies have found a way to simultaneously increase
| revenue and decrease headcount, the future of employment in
| tech would not be as rosy as its past.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-
| of...
| whiplash451 wrote:
| There's significant latency between hiring and revenue.
|
| There's probably some Elon effect happening here too ("if
| he can do it, I should be able to do it too!")
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Facebook should go all in, cut 80% out...
|
| "If you're not trying to run some sort of glorified
| activist organization and you don't care that much about
| censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of
| people, turns out," -- Elon Musk..
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Of course you can't make that case unless the growth in
| revenue continues as such.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| In one of my previous company, there was a "keeping the
| light on" plan. It specified the minimum number of people
| needed to run a company. However, CEO was clear this was
| just managed decline and not a viable mode of operating the
| business.
|
| It allowed the company to meet regulatory obligations.
| However, overtime, customers would leave because of the
| poor service.
|
| Meta can likely run effectively with even less Engineers.
| However, the lack of exciting projects will prevent them
| from attracting top talent. Overtime their product offering
| will become less interesting than their competitors.
|
| Napster, Tumblr and Yahoo are still around, however, they
| are a shadow of what they once were.
| svachalek wrote:
| I suspect Twitter is also "dead walking" at this point.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Did Twitter need to be more than keep the lights on?
|
| I thought HN's refrain 2 years ago was how ridiculous it
| was that a simple product that didn't need to add
| features had a large headcount + how many businesses
| would be better off running stable instead of for growth.
|
| Well, here we go.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I suspect "lack of exciting projects" is not driving
| people away as effectively as "tumbling stock price" and
| "likelihood of getting fired".
| majormajor wrote:
| Things happen based on rates of change now, not just
| totals.
|
| 2021 was an abnormally high jump in revenue from 2020 for
| Meta. 2022 was a drop in revenue, but roughly a return to
| trend (there's a quite linear line from 2016 to 2022
| revenue-wise).
|
| It looks like they hired based on a wrong guess about Covid
| revenue growth acceleration being a longer-lasting thing
| than it was, and now that their revenue growth path is back
| to their old trend, they can't justify all of that.
| acchow wrote:
| Most of the headcount is to maintain an advantage over
| competitors in a competitive market, thus ensuring future
| revenues.
|
| It's mostly not for this year's revenue.
|
| Related to this, the government now requires accounting
| Software Developer salaries to be amortized over 5 years,
| instead of all being booked in the year you pay them.
|
| Edit: oops, the R&D portion of SWE salaries.
|
| Edit2: Related to ensuring competition, this means that if
| your competitors slow down then you can too. If your
| competitors lay off, then you probably can to.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| *The R&D portion of software developer salaries.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| I don't get what facebook is doing with all that headcount in
| relation to their product and in comparison to other
| companies... even 20k feels too high, much too high still?!
| throwaway019254 wrote:
| They had 45k employees three years ago.
|
| Maybe they were really hiring too much?
| miohtama wrote:
| Elon Musk has shown you can lay off 80% and still have the
| service is running.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| It's now riddled with bugs and every other "reply" is an ad
| for a product completely unrelated to whatever tweet it's
| replying to.
|
| No one outside of twitter was predicting it would just
| suddenly collapse, but instead a slow degradation of quality
| (ironic given that twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most
| accurate source of information on the internet")
|
| The top tweet under every "More Tweets" section is always a
| childish Musk tweet with a 420 or 69 reference in it
| ghostpepper wrote:
| This hasn't been my experience but maybe that's due to
| running an adblocker
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| And yet plenty of people are still there on twitter. There
| have been plenty of reasons to leave and some have
| (Mastodon is now up over 11M users) I count myself as one
| of those leavers. But so far there hasn't been a mass
| exodus, there have been several small exoduses. When you
| boil the frog slowly it tends to stay in the pot: that
| seems like what we're observing at twitter. The degradation
| has been slow enough that most users are ok with it, at
| least so far.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>every other "reply" is an ad for a product completely
| unrelated to whatever tweet it's replying to.
|
| I find that very ironic. For years I have seen people
| complain about "target ads" and companies like twitter
| spying on everyone.
|
| Now if they are targets some how that is also bad...
|
| Amazing....
|
| Though I will say I have seen a dozen HPE GreenLake ads on
| twitter and still have no idea what they are trying to sell
| me...
|
| >> instead a slow degradation of quality (ironic given that
| twitter is being marketed as the "#1 most accurate source
| of information on the internet") The top tweet under every
| "More Tweets" section is always a childish Musk tweet with
| a 420 or 69 reference in it
|
| These are not mutually exclusive... I find new twitter to
| be very informative and entertaining
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| * * *
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| The point of the business is not to keep the service running
| but to make a profit, and by all accounts Twitter is
| dramatically worse off on that front.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>and by all accounts Twitter is dramatically worse off on
| that front.
|
| And what accounts are those?
| ctvo wrote:
| The accounts by Elon where he cut its valuation from 44
| billion to 20 billion to start. Or do we think its
| valuation dropped more than half with record breaking
| profits that aren't disclosed?
|
| We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that
| have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Valuation is not profit. He massively over paid for
| twitter, everyone knew that, he knew that....
|
| Twitter was never worth that, realistic valuation before
| the buyout announcement was closer to 25-30 billion, and
| they most likely were going into poor financial results
| that would have tanked the value further down to probably
| 20 or less.
|
| >We can use the accounts from advertisers and firms that
| have shared they no longer work with Twitter too.
|
| Lots of virtue signalling, many have come back, and most
| cut their ads spend for other reasons and on all
| platforms but used the twitter controversy to score some
| political points with the ESG crowd.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean the valuation drop had little to do with him and
| was largely driven by macro or are we pretending other
| social media companies didn't get cut in half during the
| same period?
|
| Facebook is still way off the highs and other's like Snap
| are floating around $10 when it peaked at $80. Twitter
| tanked from the changing macro environment not anything
| he did.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I believe that would be accounts receivable.
| what-the-grump wrote:
| considering Elon has cut 80% and still can't turn profit
| there isn't much counting going on.
| zascs wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| For how long though?
| QIYGT wrote:
| Even if it could run forever, just keeping it running isn't
| good enough. If you never make any improvements, your users
| are going to go to a different service that does.
| dnissley wrote:
| Twitter already proved this isn't the case over the last
| 10 years.
| guestbest wrote:
| Maybe META can shed users, too, and replace them with AI chat
| bots
| candiddevmike wrote:
| That already happened years ago, in my experience
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Good luck to those employees waiting to know their fate. It must
| be very stressful.
| rvz wrote:
| Engineers _obviously_ affected.
|
| As long as the stock goes up after buying at $88, then keep it
| going to save money.
|
| Meta will survive. It just needs to unload more unnecessary hires
| and adjust to save more money in the long term.
|
| All caused by the over hiring mania followed by the unsustainable
| zero interest rate phenomenon and a decade long quantitative
| easing bubble that had to end.
| zwieback wrote:
| The zero interest rate and quantitative easing was available to
| non SV companies, though, and they went through much milder
| bubbles. There's definitely something specific about tech
| mania.
|
| And now AI company will hoover up the talent, maybe the
| monetary and fiscal policies will slow that bubble down a bit.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| This just feels like a convenient story. Why would tech
| companies, who bring in billions in profits each quarter, be
| so dependent on zero interest loans? If anything, the non-SV
| companies reducing their ad spend would be a bigger
| contributor, assuming that has happened?
| fullshark wrote:
| Ignore Meta, think about how many nonprofitable tech
| companies were built by basically throwing money at growth
| the last 10 years. Then think about how early investors
| were rewarded, not by turning profitable, but by going
| public or getting acquired. That entire pipeline was built
| by cheap money.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Why would tech companies, who bring in billions in
| profits each quarter, be so dependent on zero interest
| loans?
|
| At least in the case of Facebook and Google, they were
| getting revenue from the rest of the startups that were
| dumping cheap money into marketing for growth. When that
| cheap money dries up for the startups it dries up for GOOG
| and FB as well.
| zwieback wrote:
| The ones that bring in billions in profits are less
| dependent, of course, but even those will carry loans on
| their books. Why not, if money is free. Each large
| corporation has essentially an investment bank on the
| inside.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Because development has high upfront costs. You need to
| build something before you can collect any money. That
| means lots of expensive engineers. When building is nearly
| free (free money now at expense of tomorrow's cash flow),
| you build things to sell tomorrow.
|
| Businesses of all sorts get loans when the rate is good.
| It's a business cash flow thing.
|
| Look at the SEC filings for all big tech companies. They
| discuss their billions in debt.
| mstipetic wrote:
| Because of growth expectations brought by their evaluations
| gatefun wrote:
| Facebook's Android application has been riddled with bugs for
| months, overrun with ads and now they are cutting the workforce.
| It'll be interesting.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| On the developer side, they're even closing down their API bug
| tracker, having first dropped from 95% 30 day resolution to
| 56%.
| yevpats wrote:
| Ironically this will most probably help as most companies now
| understand that putting more people on the same piece of
| software doesn't really help but make it worse.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| You still need to keep the remaining employees engaged,
| though.
|
| Adding workforce is not useful != removing workforce is
| gatefun wrote:
| I hope it helps them. At my company, there were efforts to
| compartmentalize our web application to make it more scalable
| for adding more features inside it. I left before I saw this
| effort in action, but the principles it was based on were
| solid. I believe some applications could be compartmentalized
| so that adding more features/teams would bring more value
| (without making it worse) however, I might be wrong.
| slig wrote:
| Facebook's apps on Android were always second-class citizens.
| annadane wrote:
| *Facebook
| sberens wrote:
| Interesting, about 95% of your comments in the last year are
| saying something negative about Meta/Zuck.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Perfect time for me to be looking for a new job :/
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