Meta Announces Hiring Freeze, Warns Employees of Restructuring (bloomberg.com) 57
Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said it will freeze hiring and restructure some teams in an effort to cut costs and shift priorities. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced the social networking company's freeze during a weekly Q&A session with employees, according to a person in attendance. He added that the company would reduce budgets across most teams, even teams that are growing, and that individual teams will sort out how to handle headcount changes -- whether that means not filling roles that employees depart, shifting people to other teams, or working to "manage out people who aren't succeeding," according to remarks reviewed by Bloomberg. "I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively," Zuckerberg said.
In other words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Clown-boy Zuck F'd up with his Meta crap that is now causing farcebook to hemorrhage money.
I have my billions - you're cannon fodder and out of a job.
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It's not just Zuckerberg. All these big techs are doing hiring freezes and cancelling stuff. Recession is official a thing now; they all see the writing on the wall.
5 weeks before mid terms. lol
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> How many other big tech companies can you name whose stock price has dropped 59.83% in the last year
Intel is close $53.81 -> $26.38
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Also Intel is another company which clearly does have issues beyond those attributable to the general economic environment. How the mighty have fallen. A great American company. It's sad to see.
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Shopify isn't a "big tech company". They were just another dot-com bubble, like pets.com.
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> 50% is still less than 60%.
So is 59.83% if you want to be pedantic.
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Oh? How many other big tech companies can you name whose stock price has dropped 59.83% in the last year like Meta's? At that level, it's just Zuckerberg.
It's more a case of demographics. Facebook was the Boomer-GenX social media platform. Millenials and Zoomers are on even shorter-attention-span platforms like Instagram and TikTok, primarily. Zuckerberg saw the writing on the wall and tried to expand their client base to younger users via the Meta thing, but younger users just don't care. Facebook is dying out for the same reason that brands like Avon and things like diaper services declined: the generation that loved them is getting older and dying, and th
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Not exactly, Facebook was mostly Millennials before the Boomers arrived.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Stagflation [wikipedia.org]
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Aren't public companies great? At least it's
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That doesn't matter. Zuck owns the majority of the voting shares. Only Zuck can fire Zuck.
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Wait, people really do that? I mean, believe in stuff like "corporate mission"?
To me the whole deal feels a bit like religion. I.e. bullshit invented to pacify the dumb masses.
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I work at Meta, and I just finished the free lunch in their cafeteria!
The price was only your ever-living soul. It's what gives sustenance to the Zuck-the-soul-eater after all.
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It's dead, Jim (Score:2)
It begins.
"manage out people who aren't succeeding"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: "manage out people who aren't succeeding"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: "manage out people who aren't succeeding"? (Score:2)
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This. Managing out isn't firing, it's making an employee's life living hell until they quit. It's so they don't have to pay unemployment. I've seen it before, and I'd never work for any company that admits to doing it.
That actually sounds entertaining. They can't make your life hell if you don't cooperate. Stop going to meetings, answer all e-mails with a Markov chain generator, refuse to go into the office. What are they going to do, fire you? For California companies, is there any distinction anymore?
Re: "manage out people who aren't succeeding"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"What are they going to do, fire you?"
Yes. They don't have to pay unemployment if they can show they fired you for cause, which you have just given them. Since the objective all along was not to have to pay you unemployment, they still win.
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They don't have to pay unemployment if they can show they fired you for cause, which you have just given them. Since the objective all along was not to have to pay you unemployment, they still win.
I guess you have never heard of constructive dismissal [wikipedia.org].
This little announcement will be Exhibit A.
And if the employee in question is over 40, or has some sort of disability... Queue the lawsuits.
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That's about as stupid as it gets. Because that ensures you lose the good people and retain the dregs.
Ponder this for a moment: Who will quit first? Of course the people who can easily find a new, maybe even better, job. The ones who are skilled enough to be snatched away quickly as soon as they tell their friendly neighborhood headhunter no longer "fuck off" when they get their daily call.
And who do you retain? Well, of course the people who have to put up with the bullshit ordeals you force them through b
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I don't disagree, but my cynical side thinks they are nearly admitting to essentially making employees they no longer want so frustrated they leave instead of having to fire them.
That's exactly what they're doing, and many admit it now. I saw an interview with an ex-HR staffer who openly said that they'd rather convince to leave than to fire you because of the hassles involved with terminating someone. So they do various things to basically make you want to throw up your hands and just go.
Re: "manage out people who aren't succeeding"? (Score:3)
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RIFFing and all the other euphemisms predate the WARN act.
Made Redundant (UK English) may predate WWI for all I know.
No one ever wants to say "fire" or "lay off" or "sack" and I doubt it is because of any one law.
I feel sorry for the employees about to get the axe, but fuck Fuckerberg and his grossly outsized influence on the natural course of the world. Fuck his investors, too. And fuck all who believe the mind-rotting bullshit coming from that place. Never thought I'd see something worse than TV or th
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Could we just let management out the door? It would not only cut the fat and save money, it may even increase productivity.
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That's not what that means. Managing out means giving them no raises and boring projects until they quit.
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So a "window seat" essentially?
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Fire them in other words? Can this guy speak normally about anything?
The two terms refer to entirely different processes.
* Fire: "Here's your pink slip. You no longer have a job"
* Manage out: "Here's quantity and calibre of work that your peers are doing. You're not currently meeting the same bar. We're going to work together to set concrete deliverable milestones to you, basically micromanaging expectations because you're not setting the right expectations by yourself. We'll put you in training or connect you with mentors to help you meet those milestones. At the end of the
Dead Company Walking (Score:2)
Just like AOL, Compuserve, Quantum Link, Myspace
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Just like AOL, Compuserve, Quantum Link, Myspace
Except Meta/Facebook has made 100 times more money that those companies ever did. $75 Billion net profit last year. As much as we would like to get rid of these assclowns, they aren't going anywhere soon.
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True, but in the long run I don't see them going anywhere but down.
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Just like AOL, Compuserve, Quantum Link, Myspace
I'd argue that AOL and Compuserve were killed by sudden changes in technology more than any management mistakes on their part, similar to how the fast-growing auto industry killed off common horse travel with the Model T. AOL and their competitors were built for a dial-up world, and the sudden flooding of broadband over cable just a decade later did them in.
I NEED MORE MONEY!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just them trying to cause a recession (Score:2)
Workers have been unionizing and demanding (and sometimes even getting) better pay and benefits. This is the executives reasserting control. Yanking the leash as it where.
It'll affect us too. Eventually they'll do layoffs at our companies. If you're somebody who says "it won't happen to me", good for you, you're still gonna do lots unpaid overtime.
And if you're retired, this won't fix inflation. Wages aren't keeping pace, so it's pretty obvi
Meta humor (Score:2)
There's an Easier Way (Score:4, Funny)
If you ever need to reduce your workforce, it's incredibly easy:
1) Hire a few more HR folks
2) In your company Slack, create the following channel: #reglion+politics
3) Crack open a cold one and watch your employee numbers dwindle
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If your not expanding, your contracting (Score:1)
AKA Poetic justice (Score:2)
Facebook and Zuck were making money faster than they could spend it, and then Zuck decided to go political.
They suppressed actual factual news related to the 2020 election (the "Laptop from hell", among other things), spent a half-billion dollars on direct campaign interventions (like all those ballot drop boxes they setup in certain districts in places like Wisconsin), and they censored the political postings of half of the political spectrum, thus pissing-off and driving away a large part of the user base
From meta... (Score:2)
Hmmm, could it be... (Score:1)
Face it, The Zuck rolled the dice and those dice came up snake eyes. The only thing he can do now is start