You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting.

Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.

If Facebook can turn things around then that would be truly impressive. Right now it’s on a slow march to the sidelines of has-been tech. I don’t think anyone is buying the whole metaverse thing, which just smells like someone missed the memo on Second Life. Facebook bet the farm there and the crops and livestock are looking rather ill.

I just can't tell a story in which I would end up being a person who does that. It's too alien.

So Zuckerberg, to prevent this, has the right strategy - the pirates inside the organisation strategy. Jobs did this with the Mac project. The question mark really is whether the Metaverse can deliver to take over from the Social Media platforms it has. Even if you accept the promise of Metaverse, according to Carmack the execution has been poor. Normally you just buy your way out with promising startups when execution is poor but the regulators will be heavy with Meta nowadays.

Meta has star power with AI/ML. But on Metaverse there isn't much consumer data to process (yet). So its innovation vector can't be realised.

This effectively means the stars of AI/ML won't help Meta into the future. If they leave, it could be a good thing (if we are taking the value-fuelled hypothesis as their future).

Meta I think will switch to a MBA-led approach to maximise existing value, shed its research aspirations, and switch to hiring the best mechanical/devices/hardware talent it can to improve execution on Metaverse.

Under this appraisal of Meta, broad and wide layoffs, letting the superstars go is the right thing for the company. Unlocked from Meta, those engineers will forge the next great wave of tech companies. The future will be made over the next few months as those start-up fevered ideas will actually get a footing. So I am most hopeful despite the bitter pill of current economic realities. In the short term there is real pain, particularly those relying on visas or the generous healthcare provisions from the company.

"In 2020, Meta added over 13,000 employees, a 30% increase, and the biggest year of hiring in the company’s history. In 2021, it added another 13,000 workers. By total worker numbers, it was the two biggest years of expansion in Facebook’s short history."

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...

These are not the words of someone who has learned lessons or who is interested in telling the truth.

So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. And spending on advertising has cratered as businesses everywhere have pulled in their horns in response to their own falling revenues. Facebook lived large during the fake boom. It hired way too many people and a built a bloated, middle-heavy organization that is poorly-suited to the task ahead: taking back territory it's lost to smaller, nimbler competitors. Facebook management bought the economic lies being told hook, line, and sinker.

The party's now over and Facebook faces major headwinds, including savage competition, declining revenue, and the aftermath of a hiring orgy gone wrong.

When your team got spun up to work on this project, interest rates were low and it was a sound investment to try this project out. If it was successful, it might have made/saved a moderate amount of money. It made sense to invest in it, compared to all the other options available at the time.

But alas, inflation soared and interest rates rose faster than predicted, so now the bonds are a better bet than you and your team doing whatever it was you were doing. According to this spreadsheet, it wasn't nearly as profitable as the bonds.

Focusing on Metaverse while TikTok is continuing to increase user engagement is senseless. If I were Zuck, I would do three things:

0) Wind down Metaverse investment. Throw it back into research. Kill the product. Take the loss. He has controlling interest in the stock so he probably gets a few mulligans. So long as he presents a competent forward looking strategy, I think the investor base will still give him a few more chances.

1) Narcissism 2.0 or really, Instagram 2.0 - Merge Instagram with Reels. This is hard. The experience/monetization/product has to be just right to not cannibalize existing instagram advertising revenue or user traction. It would be easy to fall down the multiple message app mess at Google. The benefit of merging is to own the best global platform for every narcissistic creator on the planet - from movie stars to your dog. Advertisers want eyeballs. Narcissists want eyeballs, some want money. Truly understand why creators are on TikTok and entice them back to a better Facebook property.

2) Lobby to get TikTok banned. If Zuck can't defeat TikTok on product development then he can get it banned. Spend dollars lobbying politicians and demand results.

I think Zuck still has a number of winning plays available to him.

3/14: Zuck posts that they're making their orgs "flatter", in other words laying off a bunch of managers & directors

"In person work is more effective"

> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely

"To remain a company that values tech we must lower the influence of people who don't value it"

> As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.

So even though people aren't willing to strap bricks to their faces now, once they understand there's no other Next Big Thing coming, they'll shrug and pick up a VR headset.

Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.

> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.

> As part of our Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on understanding this further and finding ways to make sure people build the necessary connections to work effectively. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.

I may be wrong and he may be actually referring to optimizing garbage collection on their servers, but this sounds like a callous and heartless way to refer to firing 10k people.

I've had to make some hard decisions, to fire ten thousand of you. But don't worry I take full responsibility for this failure.

All the tools in the world but you can't have a quiet office

He has lost the trust of his users and someone new needs to focus on restoring that as a precondition for anything else they do being successful. Facebook isn't Civ 5 (one of his favorite games) but he operates it like it is, and if he keeps treating FB like a video game full of NPCs he'll have plenty of time for the next Civ game.

Flagged of course, "no way this is true" etc

(Strongly reminiscent of the Cortex podcast’s “yearly themes”. Which I like! But… I’m not running one of the world’s largest companies, am I?)

Where? Just FAANGS are giving that level of salary and FAANGS are not hiring.

Looks like the age of pure remote work is done for big corporates!

How should this be interpreted? They're getting rid of all the Agile Coaches?

The whole in office is better thing is a farce, but how can you buy into a 'vision' when they don't believe it themselves.

Realizing that this is an unpopular opinion, in person work is better for the business. Business decisions are being made around encouraging in person work, because relationships help at work.

Is it total reduction now of 21K of 86K approximately? 24.4%

It's just not clear how the metaverse becomes something at the scale meta needs it to be to justify the R&D or to make an impact on its business.

To me it looks like a technology really takes off when it gives people a lighter-weight way to communicate and connect. The telephone takes off compared to writing letters because it is a much easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Messaging takes off relative to calling people on the telephone because it's an easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Social media, including Facebook take off relative to hanging out because it an easier more immediate way to tell people about things.

The new thing doesn't necessarily need to replace the old thing, it just needs to open up a new, easier, more immediate way for people to tell people about things.

The best I see is if meta can make itself the gatekeeper of the de facto standard platform for VR games/entertainment. That's potentially a pretty big business -- because maybe VR can take over AAA content and shows. But is it really big enough to sustain meta? (It seems far from certain they would end up in such an advantageous position, but Oculus is a good start.)

Wow, I would not have guessed that Buck2 would be mentioned by name, and the only project done so.

The moment they find a way to replace you and cut costs they will.

This means, don't bother working more than you have to, after all you are not working towards your own private jet, but you are building wealth of people who don't have your best interest in mind.

I don't even have a FB account but every second line here is full of the type of gaslighting and bizspeak BS that absolutely nobody appreciates.

> We do this with AI to help you creatively express yourself and discover new content.

You mean destroy adolescent growing minds with more and more addictive short burst content from advertisers.

> but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.

So goodbye ethics councils, any semblance of internal discussion over our impact on the world.

> Profitability enables innovation.

Because investors LOVE taking risks on `innovation` during a downturn. /s

More like they will push harder the methods which make their bonus'.

Facebook/Meta has provided nothing beneficial long term, to the world. Let it burn.

While today everybody wants to integrate GPT-4 into a customer facing app to increase community interaction and value to the customer, the company famous for its social graph has nothing to offer to foster integration or community building.

Even bing, the somewhat competitor now finally is the new shiny object and a direct thread to Google.

While Meta still wants to build its Metaverse, people immerse into everything that gets connected to GPT-4. GPT-4 is the real metaverse.

Ironic. Somewhat.

Great title.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...

"Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week."

So in total this means about 16% reduction from what Facebook was aiming to scale to in December 2022 (86k staff). I wish the investors had put Zuck in his place and killed the Metaverse concept early, but it looks like these cuts are across the board and not impacting any particular project.

So basically more rounds of layoffs to come?

> This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.

Sounds like they pulling the plug on remote work

Has Meta been found out as a company?

Wow, that's a pretty long timeline from announcement to execution. Being told you might be laid off some time in the next 10 months. I guess they're hoping people quit?

We always used to joke that layoffs always come in threes. The first one never cuts deep enough. People do the bare minimum.

The second one comes when everyone realises that the business actually is in trouble and does need saving.

The third one is needed as the business has been so badly damaged by the layoffs and is now bleeding cash.

I found this interesting, I wonder what the optimal ratio is. If the ratio is too high then eng is going to be hit hard, if it is too low then other roles are going to be hit hard.

https://1fish2.github.io/buzzword-bingo/corp-bingo.html

and still nothing! I think we need a new set of buzzwords.

I do believe problems about their talent pipeline or how they utilise it lays deeper than these hiring/firing sprees can solve.

Maybe we can start a discussion on the content rather than our emotions from the headline?

Some of the best parts here:

> Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports. That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible.

> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster.

> we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.

> I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation.

Wait so does that mean they'll end up with 10K less after hiring 5K folks? Which might imply that they'll be firing 15K people.

> The blog post does not explicitly state that Mark Zuckerberg takes full responsibility for the layoffs.

That's either a lie, or Mark has a serious misunderstanding of what "better" means.

But how do you manage to have so many people that you can fire 10k ?! If I googled well, they appear to have 72k employees. Where did you find the management that thought having 72k employees is reasonable to operate a bunch of websites and apps ?!

Only the best managers will survive this.

And many will be happy for the opportunity

Translation: We weren't efficient at all

They're IBM now.

I am curious what people think about this.

What kind of sociopath one has to be not to realize there's something very wrong about writing a piece like this?

It's almost like Mark or whoever put it together enjoyed doing it.

What do any of these people even do? Facebook hasn't changed in the last 10 years. Instagram etc are all finished products. How can you have hundreds of thousands of people in a company when you don't make anything?

You have to give them something to do so you get them to make a new UI because everyone always needs a new UI. But then oh no we need new servers for development so we need a new server team. And then we need a testing team for testing the UI and then we need HR for managing the new teams and accountants for managing the expanded payroll... And yet none of them actually achieve anything because it's a made-up project.

Confirms my theory that most companies are just bloat 80:20 rule.

Get rid of everyones whos not a nerd or directly sells product.

She's still employed there though. I can't imagine she'll ever be fired, too much legal risk.