Mark Zuckerberg confirms broad layoffs to begin at Meta

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/08/meta-layoffs-facebook-mark-zuckerberg

by cadence- • 4 years ago

189 195 4 years ago

jerojero• 4 years ago

Four months salary as severance seems like a really good deal to me. I don't think it will be difficult for anyone with Facebook in their resume to be re-hired.

Although losing your job is difficult, it seems to me like I would much rather be fired from Facebook than Twitter.

In any case, it's always jarring seeing CEO's saying: "I take responsibility for these troubled times... by firing thousands of employees". I remember a couple years ago when Nintendo was having problems then all the top execs lowered their compensations. I wonder if top execs at Facebook are also doing that? (doubt it).

29athrowaway4• 4 years ago

But for people with a high TC, it will become harder to find an employer willing to pay the same, especially when all companies are doing layoffs at the same time.

With a high TC usually comes an expensive lifestyle. It's a really hard process to downscale your lifestyle.

smt88• 4 years ago

I have absolutely no sympathy for the people who stuck by all of Zuckerberg's decisions to choose profit over the health of society, especially when they'll have to... get used to a less-expensive lifestyle.

tdeck2• 4 years ago

Luckily Zuckerberg thoughtfully solved the high TC problem by crashing the stock this last year, making jobs at other companies seem within reach.

xdfgh11122• 4 years ago

On that high a TC you have no excuse not saving up an emergency fund. Don't tell me it's hard, I am on a tiny fraction of that salary and I managed it.

Oh and you have a four month severance runway on top of that...

anonuser1234562• 4 years ago

Every exec at FB is compensated via share price. So yeah, they've all taken a massive hit to their comp. Zuck is down 100 billion YTD.

Ar-Curunir• 4 years ago

Most employees at tech companies are compensated via shares…

nly• 4 years ago

My heart bleeds for the poor lad. Are you telling me he won't be able to spunk $1bn/mo on fluffy vanity projects in 2023? Say it ain't so!

klipklop• 4 years ago

Maybe for the engineers. The others might have a pretty hard time finding a job that pays as well. All the high paying places in the bay have a hiring freeze.

is_true• 4 years ago

This, I know more than a dozen journalists that are now working at facebook as PR basically.

smodo• 4 years ago

More likely they'll reason that this tough decision merits some kind of bonus if it ends up benefiting the bottom line for one quarter.

nine_k• 4 years ago

In other words, all these highly paid developers did not produce something valuable enough to offset their own salaries (and other expenses, so likely 2-3x the salaries).

I suppose these are mostly good, well-working engineers. This should mean that the projects they were working on were mostly useless, bringing too little value for the effort in the short term, or too uncertain benefits at a longer term.

Something did not pan out with the product vision.

niyazpk• 4 years ago

I would much rather be fired from Facebook than Twitter.

Also, it was all over the news that Twitter fired probably based on performance (lines of code, yeah, I know). Wondering if this will make it difficult for the twitter folks to get hired compared to those from FB.

i_like_apis5• 4 years ago

That LOC thing with Twitter is just a big rumor. There are a lot of dumb rumors about Twitter and Musk floating around. Don’t believe / repeat everything you hear.

joeblubaugh2• 4 years ago

They fired over 80% of their Colorado employees - no way that was performance-based.

rsynnott2• 4 years ago

That's not firing on performance, though, it's just nonsense. Some layoffs are _actually_ performance-based, but assuming the thing about the twitter lines of code is true, that's firing based on leadership incompetence, and it would hardly count against people (unless they're applying to IBM in the 1980s, which actually _did_ use line counts for performance management...)

bruce343434• 4 years ago

I don't think it will be difficult for anyone with Facebook in their resume to be re-hired

Why is that? Do you really learn that much at Facebook, do you really become that much more proficient? What is the logic behind this thinking?

ihatepython• 4 years ago

Nobody ever gets fired for choosing IBM.

Personally if I see Facebook on a resume, I will assume that they will be expensive

matsemann• 4 years ago

Yeah, some people would consider having worked for certain companies a red flag.

cranekam• 4 years ago

The assumption is that Meta and its ilk are picky about who they employ and that should be a proxy for an employee's ability or value. Of course, the layoffs will presumably involve those who perform worst so it's not clear if these people will be in a better position or not than someone who hadn't been at Meta.

Do you really learn that much at Facebook, do you really become that much more proficient?

I think for many there is a good chance of learning valuable skills at these companies. In my time at Meta I became a more proficient engineer by being around those who were a lot better than me, and I also got a lot better at non-technical stuff like giving people feedback, leadership, communication and so on. It's obviously not impossible that I could have learned these skills elsewhere but they are weighted heavily at Meta etc and it's more likely one will have absorbed them.

None of this is universal, of course. Any particular person might be great or terrible independent of their tenure at Meta.

kavalg• 4 years ago

There is even a "very emotional" scene in Silicon Valley where Gavin Belson does just that

ChuckNorris893• 4 years ago

Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ

sorokod• 4 years ago

"saying goodbye is always hard" so true.

ChuckNorris893• 4 years ago

I remember a couple years ago when Nintendo was having problems then all the top execs lowered their compensations.

The culture of shame on failure is pretty strong in Japan and sometimes goes too far. After the crash of Japan Airlines 123 where over 500 people died, two high level people related to the accident committed suicide. Not something I'd like to see normalized. Loosing more lives is not the solution.

majewsky• 4 years ago

Surely there is a middle ground between not assuming any responsibility and killing yourself over it.

shusaku• 4 years ago

I don't think it will be difficult for anyone with ______ in their resume to be re-hired.

I seem to read this comment every other day, hopefully it’s not adding up…

iso16313• 4 years ago

I think this golden age of software development has come to an end, and I think many in the industry are in denial.

googlerx• 4 years ago

Zuck could personally give 3000 fired employees $1million each and that would be less than 10% of his net worth.

robertlagrant3• 4 years ago

Doing maths that depend on paper worth is pointless.

snapcaster2• 4 years ago

I know you're probably just making a point but you realize this isn't true right? He would have to liquidate meta stock to make this happen, resulting in the price dropping and requiring him to liquidate more etc. etc.

martius2• 4 years ago

Four months of pay may not be that much if you moved to another country or continent with your family for this job.

While it's probably easy to land on your feet and find something with a good pay in SV or London, it's probably not the case everywhere.

4 months of pay for this kind of trouble doesn't look like a good deal to me.

bluedevil2k8• 4 years ago

4 months of pay at the highest paying software company in the world is FAR more generous than you're going to see from any company anywhere in the world.

culopatin• 4 years ago

It’s more than you get in any normal place in the US, in many states you get a thank you handshake and someone holding the door for you. It’s a risk you choose to take when you work in the US instead of somewhere in Europe or some other country with better worker protections.

gsatic• 4 years ago

They are not leaders. They are just finely tuned machine parts. Don't expect them to think, say or do anything the machine doesn't need.

geodel4• 4 years ago

I don't know FAANG engineers with their very high self worth would take the humiliation of lower salary as oppose to layoffs.

In any case, it's always jarring seeing CEO's saying: "I take responsibility for these troubled times... by firing thousands of employees"

Even if reflect badly on founder/CEO to say "I erred by hiring tons of below average engineers who couldn't deliver so I am fixing it now" It would reflect worse on those engineers in real world.

bluedevil2k8• 4 years ago

I don't know FAANG engineers with their very high self worth would take the humiliation of lower salary as oppose to layoffs.

Do you apply negative stereotypes to people you don't know as a normal part of your daily interactions?

Aeolun• 4 years ago

In any case, it's always jarring seeing CEO's saying: "I take responsibility for these troubled times... by firing thousands of employees"

To some extend. But it’s true too. It is their fault.

shapefrog• 4 years ago

"I take responsibility for these troubled times... by firing thousands of employees - I can gaurantee that my performance related pay for this year will only be $200 million instead of the $500 million I was expecting to be paid."

kennethreitz• 4 years ago

the problem is job market flooding

belter• 4 years ago

"First, Let’s Fire All the Managers" - https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers

tartoran• 4 years ago

They keep all the managers to make sure the remaining employees end up covering the work of the ones laid off:) Im sure they laid off a few managers here and there though

gamblor956• 4 years ago

People who advocate for firing managers forget (or are too junior to have ever learned) that managers...were once the regular line employees, bu they did well enough at their jobs to get promoted into the positions of managing other employees so that the other employees could also do well in their jobs.

Managers are usually the most competent employees at actually getting shit done, because they have to do their own shit on top of managing what the employees are doing.

mywacaday• 4 years ago

Four months is not that great depending on where you work and your tenure, I previously worked in Financial Services and there were three rounds of redundancy in my 10 years, luckily/unluckily I was never selected. The offer at the time was 6 weeks salary per year rounded up to the nearest full year and paid for your contracted notice period, capped at max two years salary. There were plenty of people that hit that two year cap and plenty more that took home more than a years salary.

justinator2• 4 years ago

Just in time for Christmas.

bluedevil2k8• 4 years ago

Christmas is 2 months away, and they're getting 4 months severance and many companies ramp up hiring in January...what's your point exactly?

disgruntledphd22• 4 years ago

This is a terrible time to get laid off, as no one will be interviewing till the new year.

justinator2• 4 years ago

I'm sure one's wife will completely understand.

bitL• 4 years ago

A company I know fired 50% of their devs 1 day before Christmas without any prior notice. Many people got a message during their daily meetings and some were just outright blocked when they attempted to login without any explanation.

jstx13• 4 years ago

From their Q3 earnings report 2 weeks ago (https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_news/Meta-Reports-...):

we expect headcount at the end of 2023 will be approximately in-line with third quarter 2022 levels

Was that a lie or are they re-hiring in the future?

manasdaruka• 4 years ago

Can there be legal ramifications for giving wrong information like this? In any case I assume these type of accusations might be quite easy to defend

KptMarchewa2• 4 years ago

If they are firing 50% like musk maybe, if they are firing 10% it's all perfectly in line with that guidance.

glintik• 4 years ago

"we expect" is not equal to "we ensure"

spuz• 4 years ago

According to the WSJ article:

“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” he said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 26. “In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”

So it doesn't sound like they are lying in the Q3 report. Their current plan is to shrink some teams and grow others resulting in about the same number of employees a year from now.

dom96• 4 years ago

slightly smaller organization than we are today

"slightly" doing a lot of work there

jstx13• 4 years ago

Layoffs at the top companies put downward pressure on the entire job market - fewer open positions, less mobility for everyone, more competition... if you're working at an average non-tech company and want to move up in salary, now you're competing with a bunch of people who have big tech on their resume and who were good enough to pass the big tech interview loop in the past.

whiplash4513• 4 years ago

I would disagree with that. Your company probably has a hiring freeze at the moment. You are not competing with external people. If you are a crucial person to your company, you are actually in a decent position to get an increase. If you are not crucial, you are on the list for the second round.

jstx13• 4 years ago

No way, increasing compensation for current employees was difficult even when the market was hot. I'm not buying that the companies with hiring freezes are giving out raises (certainly not more raises than before).

yuhc• 4 years ago

Both make sense, while new grads always hurt.

dustedcodes• 4 years ago

"and who were good enough to pass the big tech interview loop in the past"

I would rephrase that to "who were willing to go through the big tech interview loop in the past". The big different between the people who go through this and don't is not ability but desire from my experience.

Herbstluft• 4 years ago

I agree that the way those tech interviews are designed makes them more of a marathon that tests determination.

Doesn't change that the prestige of having it on your resume will cause many other companies to blindly hire you.

raducu• 4 years ago

The big different between the people who go through this and don't is not ability but desire from my experience.

I know 4 developers that work for FAANG companies, I don't know why, but all 4 of them are women.

One is a brilliant programmer, team leader and generally a wonderful person to hang around with. The other 3.... well... I have no idea how on Earth they made it, they're clueless when it comes to programming; of which 2 have serious personality issues also.

ramblerman• 4 years ago

It depends.

- It's unclear if the layoffs hit software engineering, or if it's mostly business roles.

- Engineers from FANG (or whatever the acronym now is) aren't competing for all the roles out there. They generally aren't looking to join banks/insurance/telco or what they would consider "boring" roles.

If you are looking to join a cool well paying startup in SF, then yes, I imagine the competition is extra tough right now.

cupofjoakim• 4 years ago

If Meta is removing non-essential employees I wonder if we could see the core react team having to leave at some point. That could be quite the shift for frontend work.

ajdegol• 4 years ago

to svelte

pts_• 4 years ago

React to Solid, Angular and Vue to Svelte.

mikojan• 4 years ago

Cross your fingers!

dindresto• 4 years ago

I'm sure Vercel would be happy to take full control of React by hiring the core team.

solardev5• 4 years ago

That would be amazing. I'd love to see React detached from Facebook's needs, which don't matter to most companies, and be taken over by the community instead. Honestly React is kinda useless without its ecosystem anyway, the vast majority of which is third party already.

Next would be a great steward to inherit React.

homeland221• 4 years ago

Meta name is cursed. The slide begins the moment they changed from FB.

DaiPlusPlus• 4 years ago

The slide really began with Eternal September…

est• 4 years ago

The whole metaverse & VR thing is a scam. People seem to forget a thing from the past called 2ndlife.

hellweaver6663• 4 years ago

There was an article on BBC news the other day about people investing in property in the metaverse. It blew my mind because it's not a finite space like the real world... the idea that people are spending thousands speculating on virtual real estate in an unproven environment that has almost zero uptake is mind blowing.

vkou• 4 years ago

It's not a scam, it's a Hail Mary play to control the platform that Facebook's services run on. Without that control, it's at the mercy of upstream vendors.

It's not going to work, but there's a good reason for why they are trying.

mlajtos• 4 years ago

Second Life was just another window in your computer. VR (or AR, XR, etc.) is new hardware paradigm for displaying stuff.

Edit: not really "new" – first AR/VR display was in 1968 by Ivan Sutherland, but current tech allows us to have standalone device with good ergonomics and plenty of performance

stoobs3• 4 years ago

Or VRChat, which does everything Meta is trying to do years ago

TheCoelacanth• 4 years ago

I think it's the reverse. The name change was a response to seeing an inevitable slide looming in the future.

radar1310• 4 years ago

Merry Christmas Meta.

hellweaver6663• 4 years ago

Keep the change ya filthy animal

SilverBirch• 4 years ago

I think we all know that how this is received will be entirely down to where the cuts come. If the cuts come in the Metaverse R&D, the stock price will jump and everyone will be more or less happy - you can believe in the Metaverse and that project and still understand it is a massive overinvestment. If the cuts come in the legacy business with the Metaverse protected I think that will be an indication that no Meta shareholders can honestly expect to see the revenue from the social media business, Zuckerberg will burn it all before he hands it back to shareholders, so in that case this could be a horrible performing stock. And of course that's important because most people at Meta have significant stock based comp.

disgruntledphd22• 4 years ago

He's almost certainly cutting core so he can continue to invest in the metaverse. Rightly or wrongly, he thinks this is the right decision.

saos• 4 years ago

Meta’s head of human resources, Lori Goler, said employees who lose their jobs will be provided with at least four months of salary as severance

That is sweet. Can enjoy the holidays

Zuckerberg said he was accountable for the company’s downturn

Lol then reduce your stock size? Offer your employees your money. Honestly, all these CEOs coming out with the same line is just nonsense

agd• 4 years ago

Sweet for many, but very tough for those on visas who will have to now leave the US and abandon the lives they built there.

K5EiS• 4 years ago

I'm not familiar with visas, do they not get any time to find new jobs?

bismuthcrystal• 4 years ago

Since when it became reasonable to build a life on such a weak foundation?

solardev5• 4 years ago

It's the risk they take working in a foreign country.

Many Americans have no job security or savings either. Hard to feel bad for foreigners who come here and earn Facebook salaries while sending money home and displacing local citizens and economies.

I am the child of immigrants who did just that, BTW. Global labor is only good for capitalists and owners, not for everyday workers and residents and communities.

Animatronio• 4 years ago

Why give them his money? Were they not very well paid to begin with? Or rather they expected to be set for life once hired by META?

Eumenes• 4 years ago

These severance packages are very generous

nicolashahn• 4 years ago

Some data from the inside:

RL hit less hard than the rest of the company. No one on my team or adjacent teams let go.

Most bootcampers are gone, even ones that were performing well.

Low performer from my past team outside RL was let go, so it appears performance was a factor for a lot of roles, rather than just axing entire teams based on business need.

Mark Zuckerberg confirms broad layoffs to begin at Meta

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