Metaverse Jobs Are Disappearing as Hiring Slows at Google, Facebook (bloomberg.com) 37
Meta Platforms, grappling with its first-ever quarterly sales slump, now has another problem: Jobs in the metaverse are disappearing. From a report: New monthly job postings across all industries with "metaverse" in the title declined 81% between April and June, according to workplace researcher Revelio Labs, after surging in the months following Facebook's rebranding last fall. The dropoff coincides with a broader slowdown across the tech sector, which has prompted layoffs and hiring freezes, leaving workers from the Bay Area to Bangalore increasingly rattled. Job postings in tech hubs like San Francisco and Austin, Texas, dropped 8.4% in the past four weeks, according to job site Indeed.
Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's big bet on virtual reality and other nascent, immersive technologies encouraged companies of all stripes to look for experts in those fields, which may have created "short-lived hype from the demand side," Revelio Labs economist Jin Yan said. Now, as employers recalibrate their hiring needs and labor budgets amid growing concerns of a recession, that hype has come face to face with a sobering, and fully non-virtual, reality.
Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's big bet on virtual reality and other nascent, immersive technologies encouraged companies of all stripes to look for experts in those fields, which may have created "short-lived hype from the demand side," Revelio Labs economist Jin Yan said. Now, as employers recalibrate their hiring needs and labor budgets amid growing concerns of a recession, that hype has come face to face with a sobering, and fully non-virtual, reality.
Uh-Oh (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean my career plan to roll around an NFT vending cart in the Metaverse is in peril?
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I’m now imagining you as the metaverse/NFT equivalent of that cabbage cart guy from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Money is usually colloquially referred to as “lettuce”, not “cabbage”, but I suspect there’s room for you to make a similar lament to his when people knock over your cart nonetheless.
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My NFTs!
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I had not thought of that comparison but it is perfect. :-)
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Don't worry. You were planning to sell nothing, now you can still sell nothing!
Vaporware gonna vapor (Score:3)
Film at 11.
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Lack of job security in virtual reality? Who'd have thunk it?
But in solution terms, I regret not being able to amplify the thud of reality hitting the vapor. Maybe if we freeze the vapor first? But you'd have to freeze a lot of vapor before you could even hope for a good thudding.
However I've starting thinking about why Zuck in particular is so into virtual reality. Must be something about real reality that is bugging him. A lot. Or maybe he's contemplating the future reality his Facebook is creating and hi
Re: Vaporware gonna vapor (Score:2)
Freezing vapor is deposition.
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... I've starting thinking about why Zuck in particular is so into virtual reality. Must be something about real reality that is bugging him. A lot.
Perhaps it's the case that even with all his money, he simply can't get laid in 'real reality'. Or maybe he just wants to take his voyeuristic impulses to the next level.
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Sounds too ad hominem, and even if it was true at the time of Facebook's creation, it doesn't seem accurate now--though you'll never get close enough to be sure, considering how much Zuck values is own privacy now.
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New jobs doesn't mean vapourware, it means that companies are putting a hiring freeze in place because they are smart and see a recession coming. Existing employees and managers are still very much pushing metacrap.
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I don't know how old you are, but personally this is at least the third huge VR push that I recall over the last 30 or so years. It's the same promises and blue sky each time just with flashier graphics.
So fair enough then, I'm just putting my marker down now.
There's a recession... (Score:3)
That's not why (Score:1)
Now, inflation's hitting double digits & they're making record profits. Think of it as an adjustment tax to recoup the money
Maximizing profits now is not about recouping anything. It's about trying to get enough money together for raw materials which, do not forget, are also rapidly increasing in price thanks to inflation.
Re: That's not why (Score:2)
How much raw materials does it take to clone secondlife circa 2004
Re: That's not why (Score:2)
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I gotta a floppy .... wait you said disk
my bad - Os
Who is asking for this (Score:4, Interesting)
The only ones that seem to want this are the big tech companies so they can track more info and sell avatars.
All the while, doing to bare minimum of work on what looks to be a PS2 open world game.
Re:Who is asking for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there some market that is asking for this that I am not aware of.
I see plenty of articles saying a metaverse will be the next big thing. I see stories of people spending inordinate amounts of money on virtual real estate in a metaverse in order to secure some future investment.
I'm yet to see any article put a compelling case why a metaverse will be the next big thing, and what the benefits would be.
Re: Who is asking for this (Score:3)
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I am asking for a real metaverse.
Not the counterfeit Metaverse peddled by Facebook. It's worse than a Hoverboard that doesn't hover.
Re:Who is asking for this (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, it's being driven mostly by a Fear Of Missing Out. Meta is a big player with lots of money, so corporations are hesitant to discount the upcoming "metaverse" even if they don't understand it. We saw this in the dot-com boom. We saw it with blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and now the Metaverse. It's just corporate speculation, trying to guess the next big thing, and getting in on the ground floor. Everyone today looks Apple's iPhone or early Bitcoin miners or Snapchat and says "Dammit! Why didn't WE do that?!"
In fairness, these things are notoriously difficult to predict ahead of time, and look ridiculously simple to spot in hindsight. I'm not very bullish on Facebook's idea of the Metaverse, mostly because I fail to see the appeal to people like me, but it's possible they'll tap into a market that I'm not aware of. Hard to say, really.
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Pretty much. Although if you include all those attempts at things that failed in the hindsight, things are stopping to look simple very fast.
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I'm not very bullish on Facebook's idea of the Metaverse, mostly because I fail to see the appeal to people like me, but it's possible they'll tap into a market that I'm not aware of. Hard to say, really.
After seeing what my kids do on Instagram, I second the notion that there may some vast market for useless insanity that I know nothing about ...
disappearing because ... who cares? (Score:1)
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Meta... physical (Score:4, Interesting)
It was all a dream. One big dream with crypto at the heart of it. Once the markets drove a stake through the crypto heart, the metaverse died with it.
Meta-bullshit is still bullshit (Score:2)
I guess some people have figured that out recently...
I know the answer (Score:2)
Hopefully.. (Score:3)
.. ignoring the whole metaverse thing is about to be shown to be the correct approach.
Will they change their name again? (Score:2)