Meta To Cut Another 10,000 Jobs and Cancel 'Low Priority Projects' (techcrunch.com) 57
Meta plans to cut its workforce by another 10,000 people, withdraw around 5,000 open roles that it has not filled and cancel some projects, company co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday, confirming recent rumors that another round of layoffs was imminent. From a report: The announcement comes just four months after Meta revealed that it was eliminating about 11,000 roles as the social networking giant pushes to become more efficient this year. Combined, this means that Meta has effectively laid off -- or plans to lay-off -- roughly one-quarter of its workforce since the tail-end of last year. Facebook's parent firm said it expects the latest "restructuring" efforts to start in April, and the process to impact business groups in May. Zuckerberg said that the company will also cancel "lower priority projects," adding that it "underestimated the indirect costs" associated with these initiatives.
Perspective... (Score:4, Informative)
They have 86,400 employees. Roughly 7%.
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This economy sucks ass.
Not yet it doesn't: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com].
I graduated in '04 and that was not the worst economy.
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This economy sucks ass.
Not yet it doesn't: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com].
I graduated in '04 and that was not the worst economy.
I graduated in 2000 and my first job was with MCI Worldcom.
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This economy sucks ass.
Not yet it doesn't: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com].
I graduated in '04 and that was not the worst economy.
I graduated in 2000 and my first job was with MCI Worldcom.
My sympathies. My first job was 5 years with a company that laid off 2/3 of its engineers because of the 2008 crash blowing away all of their customers.
Re:Just got layed off. And my bank account's froze (Score:5, Insightful)
Their entire business is based on advertising and data collection and they can afford 80,000+ employees? That right there is what is wrong with the economy.
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Anyone who is supplied with information by Google knows it is already rubbish.
Unfortunately, everything is rubbish these days.
We are doomed - we are all doomed <appologies for lack of a credible Scottish accent>.
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That right there is what is wrong with the economy.
Huh? I don't follow? What's wrong with the economy? That 80000 people are gainfully employed? That institutional shareholders holding the pension funds of people around the world invested in a profitable company?
Honestly not sure what point you're making. Maybe the point you're making is that you don't understand how business works or that you think advertising revenue is low? I mean 80000 people * 150000 which will be more than the average person earns but whatever let's roll with it, works out to $12billi
The big concern is the economy doesn't suck (Score:2)
The whole reason the fed is hiking interest rates ( an inadvertently causing banks to be under capitalized) is because the economy is doing too well. There's not enough unemployment, companies are paying higher wages, people are finding it too easy to switch jobs. Ergo inflation which can truly suck is getting started. The fed is prescribing a medicine that tastes bitter but is good for calming an in sufficiently sucking economy.
Ironically big layoffs are what's needed. And getting laid off early in thi
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Um, 10k out of 86,400 is roughly 11%...
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Um, 10k out of 86,400 is roughly 11%...
Oops. You're correct.
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They laid off 11k in November so that's more like 25%
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Meta has effectively laid off -- or plans to lay-off -- roughly one-quarter of its workforce since the tail-end of last year.
Whenever a company lays off that many people, the very first thing that should happen, immediately, is the CEO should be fired for being grossly incompetent.
Fortunately, Zuck planned ahead. Long ago he gave himself special shares of stock which give him 10 votes for each share. No matter how much of an incompetent fuckwad he is, nobody can get rid of him because he can always outvote them.
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Whenever a company lays off that many people, the very first thing that should happen, immediately, is the CEO should be fired for being grossly incompetent.
Who would you replace Zuck with, and why?
You can say what you want about him, but his track record speaks for itself.
The only difference between this company and any other company letting people go is the scale and the media impact.
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take 10,000 down and pass them around
76,400 employees in the company
Even Better Perspective... (Score:2)
They have 86,400 employees. Roughly 7%.
Not only that. They had 86,400 employees *AFTER* cutting 13% of it's workforce in November last year, meaning at some point last year they would have had around 99,000 employees. They had 71,900 employees at the end of 2021. Even after cutting 11000 jobs on top of last year's cuts they will still have grown significantly.
Remember this (Score:3)
A corporation of this size, engaging in this sort of activity telegraphs a level of sheer incompetence which is difficult to fathom.
Nobody in tech should ever be aiming to work at Facebook ever again. Their management incompetence means your job is not only not secure, it's probably meaningless to begin with.
Layoff numbers directly correlate with the CEO's incompetence. And seriously... who didn't know that Mark Zuckerberg was an incompetent, socially inept dweeb who got lucky?
Cross them off your list folks. Working for Facebook is just a waste of your life. Go out and do something interesting.
Re:Remember this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Remember this (Score:4, Interesting)
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what was the last time online ads convinced you to buy something?
Depends on what we mean by "ad." I've actually bought a few things because of YouTube creator sponsorships and due to the fact it was something I was genuinely interested in (otherwise I skip forward). But if an "ad" gets shoved in my face when I'm not asking for it then it can actually have the affect of "un-selling" me on something just from the annoyance / piss-me-off factor. Then again, ad blockers have rendered that uncommon anyway.
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A bit niche but DigiKey sends me a spamvertisement e-mail showcasing new components. Every now and then a new component gets my attention and maybe is just what I'm looking for. It's happened a few times - including a zero-crossing detector just when I was looking for one with decent isolation.
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Re:Remember this (Score:4, Interesting)
A corporation of this size, engaging in this sort of activity telegraphs a level of sheer incompetence which is difficult to fathom.
How is the incompetence of a kid who dropped out of college because his startup took off but now is in the position to run a $500 billion company difficult to fathom? Honestly the level of competence he has shown so far is astounding.
The level of confidence investors put into Zuckerberg to run this company well with little to no accountability to shareholders is what should be difficult to fathom.
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This is a really good take. It is honestly impressive that Zucc ran Facebook so well being some inexperienced kid.
It’s not really surprising that eventually he’d fuck it up having never been humbled, his eyes ever more vacant, his daily experience veering further and further from that of his audience.
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> How is the incompetence of a kid who dropped out of college because his startup took off but now is in the position to run a $500 billion company difficult to fathom?
Successful corporations usually have adults in the room who define and execute strategy.
Facebook took a long time to become profitable and just jumped on the "copy every app and put ads in it bandwagon". There's no technological development, no detailed considered corporate strategy, just Zuck's bumbling incompetence.
I mean the guy thoug
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Most of those jobs in the tech sector were justified at one point or another. The popularity of selling hype and bullshit across social media and the MSM has waned for obvious reasons. The end result is a considerable drop in revenue, which always results in job cuts.
And it's quite ironic when The Product is bitching about incompetent management. If we don't like that business, perhaps society should stop feeding it.
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Most of those jobs in the tech sector were justified at one point or another.
Nope. 90% of the people being laid off never should have been hired in the first place. They were vanity hires, nothing more. When times are good and the money is rolling in, managers can pretty much do whatever they want, including hiring lots of people just to make themselves look more important.
That is the *ONLY* way that you can end up with a company that has 86,000 employees when they should have 8,000.
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That is the *ONLY* way that you can end up with a company that has 86,000 employees when they should have 8,000.
No, not really the *ONLY* way. It's quite political as well. You don't get an administration bragging about "50,000 new jobs!" every chance they get without the Donor Class actually ponying up most of those positions to sustain that illusion.
Especially if you want to sustain the delusion that a degree from a US College is still worth the corrupt price they're charging. And we *KNOW* how political colleges are. Hell, they're indoctrination camps now.
On a related note, I wonder what companies had the most
A shitty business can be a good job for the young (Score:4, Interesting)
A corporation of this size, engaging in this sort of activity telegraphs a level of sheer incompetence which is difficult to fathom.
Nobody in tech should ever be aiming to work at Facebook ever again. Their management incompetence means your job is not only not secure, it's probably meaningless to begin with.
Many of my best jobs were horrible business models with shitty management. However, I got to take on a huge load of responsibility that led to me learning a lot and getting great jobs afterwards. In fact, chaos is just opportunity, especially when you're young. Most of the dot com jobs were really really pointless and had fatally stupid business models, but they hired me right out of college, paid well, and jumpstarted my career and skillset. No matter how dumb their business models were, a paycheck is a paycheck.
I personally wouldn't want to make a career at Facebook, but I know a lot of sharp people working there with very cool technology. Yes, with any shitty job, eventually you need to find a new one when they fail, but if you enjoy the people you work with and the work you do and can easily find a better job when you're done...why not? My standards for collecting a paycheck are far lower than my standards for investing my personal money.
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how is same shit different place any better?
job security? what decade are you living in? not one in past 40 years, that's for sure
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A corporation of this size, engaging in this sort of activity telegraphs a level of sheer incompetence which is difficult to fathom.
I think you don't understand the concept of a bubble. Or maybe you think every tech major is incompetent (since basically all except Apple have reported cuts), in which case you're more than happy to go and build your own trillion dollar business if you so wish.
They ramped up for Zuck's ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure about Facebook, but Tesla and SpaceX both have multiple sources who discuss how there's an entire team who's job is to keep the CEO occupied so he doesn't screw things up with "hardcore extreme" ideas. One of the problems with Twitter is they didn't have that team in place, so the guy had the run of the place. And every boneheaded idea he's had comes through.
This is pretty common actually, so much so it's got a name, "Great Man Theory". Ask any historian who isn't in the employ of a political think tank and they'll snort and chortle a bit when they hear it because it's been so thoroughly discredited yet it still holds onto people's imaginations. It's especially strong with nerds, who grew up reading sci-fi full of this archetype. e.g. Mary Sues.
Re:They ramped up for Zuck's ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They ramped up for Zuck's ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Most smart people don't bet their entire companies on moonshot ideas like "the metaverse" either.
I can't recall any recent tech company pouring so, so much money on something no one seems to give two shits about.
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Musk doesn't listen to people (Score:2, Flamebait)
But it's as if we took one of those goofy guys in a suit and actually put them in charge of Tokyo. They have no idea how to run a city any more than Musk knows how to run a company
Musk is someone who has been protected from his own idiocy his entire life. First by
Notice how when I mention Twitter's CEO by name (Score:2)
I mean sure, he fired all the engineers that keep the site up, but he kept the guys who make sure you can't speak ill of him directly. He's got that going for him I guess. Kinda like how Gates paid to collect every one of those books where he wrote about how he pirated the code for Microsoft basic from university trash bins.
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He really hasn't bet the whole company.
The metaverse loss was $13.7bn per year, so without it they would have made about $37bn net profit.
It's not like he's funding it with debt, he's just reinvesting a bit of profit.
It's similar to Amazon's spending on Alexa, which is still losing $10bn per year, or one of their many other bets like stores without checkouts. Amazon is loss making.
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Most smart people don't bet their entire companies on moonshot ideas like "the metaverse" either.
You're right, and Zuckerberg didn't. I know big numbers are scary but he spent only 15% of revenue on R&D for the Metaverse, and rolled a very healthy net profit far larger than Metaworst investment last year.
The term "bet their entire company" implies a something high risk where failure could sink the company. Facebook could drop the Metaverse tomorrow, delete the code, throw all their hardware in the bin, and shrug it off more easily than Google cancels yet another product you've never heard of.
They a
You're mixing things up (Score:2)
The expectation is that someone at that level is so extraordinary that we would expect everything they do to be successful because they would know the difference between something that is and isn't going to be successful. This is what is meant by a job creator.
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He doesn't really have ideas or inventions, he just made decisions to pursue some known markets.
His biggest problem is that he has no taste or concept of style. It's not in him.
He has all of those people, the hardware labs, unimaginably massive server farms.
But Meta produced content for Oculus has always been coated in low-bar cheese.
Zuckerberg is simply blind to what really good looks and works like.
Meta stands for... (Score:2)
"Meta" stands for "Metastasize", and yet more layoffs proves it.
Of course there's a bunch of delusional fanbois that think them shedding weight means they're in some kind of remission - they don't realize the weight loss if from the cancer taking over.
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Of course there's a bunch of delusional fanbois that think them shedding weight means they're in some kind of remission - they don't realize the weight loss if from the cancer taking over.
Not sure I've ever seen a fanboi of Facebook (do they even exist)? I mean people pointing out you're completely wrong and that even after these layoffs Facebook will have grown at quite consistent year on year level and if you cut 11000 from their 2022 headcount they would right on healthy growth trend (and still bigger than they've ever been) doesn't make them a fanboi, it just makes them correct.
But I get it man, we all live with a fantasy that Facebook is failing and about to go broke. But unfortunately
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Just because you are unwilling to admit (or simply don't realize) that you are a "fanboi" by coming to FB's rescue while simultaneously trying to claim you're not doesn't negate the OP's point. But nice try though. F- for obvious trolling.
Wait - People don't want to wear a headset all day (Score:2)
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hope this tanks Facebook and Insta and other useless division they own
I don't. I hope the shareholders and board force a leadership change and set facebook in a new (ethical) direction.
Social media is not going away. Better to reign this one in or someone else will just start another even worse one...
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I hope the shareholders and board force a leadership change and set facebook in a new (ethical) direction.
Not going to happen. It can't happen, because Zuck won't allow it to happen.
As completely and utterly incompetent as he is, Zuck did one smart thing years ago (well, it was good for *HIM* but not so good for everyone else). He gave himself special shares of stock. It is impossible for shareholders to do anything because he can always outvote them. He literally set himself up as Dictator For Life.
And yet... (Score:1)