Mass Layoffs and Absentee Bosses Create a Morale Crisis At Meta (nytimes.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, has declared that 2023 will be the "year of efficiency" at his company. So far, efficiency has translated into mass layoffs. He has conducted two rounds of cuts over the past six months, with two more to come; these will eliminate more than 21,000 people. Mr. Zuckerberg is also closing 5,000 open positions, which amounts to 30 percent of his company's work force. At the same time, some of Meta's top executives have moved away and are managing large parts of the Silicon Valley company from their new homes in places like London and Tel Aviv. The layoffs and absentee leadership, along with concerns that Mr. Zuckerberg is making a bad bet on the future, have devastated employee morale at Meta, according to nine current and former employees, as well as messages reviewed by The New York Times.
Employees at Meta, which not long ago was one of the most desirable workplaces in Silicon Valley, face an increasingly precarious future. The company's stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago. More layoffs, Mr. Zuckerberg has said on his Facebook page, are coming this month. Some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. "So many of the employees feel like they're in limbo right now," said Erin Sumner, a global director of human resources at DeleteMe, who was laid off from Facebook in November. "They're saying it's 'Hunger Games' meets 'Lord of the Flies,' where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management."
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is not the only big tech company that has hit the brakes on spending. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others have laid off thousands of workers in recent months, shed office space, dropped perks and pulled back from experimental initiatives. But Meta appears to face the most challenges. Last year, the company reported consecutive quarters of declining revenue -- a first since it became a public company in 2012.
Employees at Meta, which not long ago was one of the most desirable workplaces in Silicon Valley, face an increasingly precarious future. The company's stock price has dropped 43 percent from its peak 19 months ago. More layoffs, Mr. Zuckerberg has said on his Facebook page, are coming this month. Some of those cuts could be in engineering groups, which would have been unthinkable before the trouble started last year, two employees said. "So many of the employees feel like they're in limbo right now," said Erin Sumner, a global director of human resources at DeleteMe, who was laid off from Facebook in November. "They're saying it's 'Hunger Games' meets 'Lord of the Flies,' where everyone is trying to prove their worth to management."
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is not the only big tech company that has hit the brakes on spending. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others have laid off thousands of workers in recent months, shed office space, dropped perks and pulled back from experimental initiatives. But Meta appears to face the most challenges. Last year, the company reported consecutive quarters of declining revenue -- a first since it became a public company in 2012.
What Did it Take? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What Did it Take? (Score:5, Interesting)
Employees at Meta, which not long ago was one of the most desirable workplaces in Silicon Valley
In what parallel universe was Facebook ever "one of the most desirable workplaces?"
Re: What Did it Take? (Score:2)
Probably depends on who you ask. I've been told by one ex-employee that when he first onboarded there, they had him add his entire team as "friends" on Facebook. Creepy. He thought so as well, but maybe not everybody thinks so.
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In the fictional universe where a journalist wants to spice up their story.
Re:What Did it Take? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: What Did it Take? (Score:2)
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That would be the Meta-Verse.
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Well, for one, in central Oregon it's a very desirable employer, and you have Apple right across the street if you want a change.
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Well, they are easy to get to from 101. That's a big plus in Si Val.
Re:What Did it Take? (Score:4, Funny)
How did Facebook successfully convince the press to go along with its "Meta" name change?
"That's a real nice page your newspaper has here on Meta. Be a real shame if Meta were to glitch when serving it, so people had trouble accessing your Meta page, on Meta. Incidentally, what are we called again?".
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How did Facebook successfully convince the press to go along with its "Meta" name change? Especially after the press (and everyone else) told Google to fuck off over "Alphabet."
Your statement doesn't match my experience. Whenever I see a story about Alphabet, what I typically see is some variation of "Alphabet (formerly Google)" or "Google parent Alphabet". Plus, an entity named "Google" still exists as a sub-unit of said "Alphabet" - so there are legitimate reasons a story can still refer to Google without intending it as a FO towards the company.
With Meta / Facebook, as I understand it - "Facebook" no longer exists, so there's no reason to refer to that name other than to clarif
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FWIW I personally found both rebrandings quite silly.
I thought "Alphabet" was silly, too, until I realized it's exactly the right name for something like that. "Alpha bet", as in "Let's bet on all these different long shots and see which ones make money."
It's like when somebody points out the arrow embedded in the FedEx logo... once you see it you can't unsee it.
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It's like when somebody points out the arrow embedded in the FedEx logo... once you see it you can't unsee it.
When somebody points out that "Meta" is short for "metastasize" you can't unthink it!
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Given the nature of the company involved, I imagine "metastasize" came naturally to a lot of people's minds simultaneously - before anyone even had a chance to point it out.
Count your blessings. (Score:2)
I feel blessed that I rejected this dumpsterfire of a company.
Similarly to Google, they both suck.
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It's very satisfying to get to a point where headhunters start reaching out to you, and you can politely tell them to go pound sand if they represent companies you dislike.
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Exactly.
The sad part is that even after telling the Facebook/Meta recruiters "I will NEVER work for Facebook since it doesn't respect people" they STILL want to contact you. :-/
Re: Count your blessings. (Score:4, Interesting)
In situations like this the top skill people are already leaving.
The end result can be a total collapse of the company, especially since all Meta/Facebook has as assets are the users and imaginary values.
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More than likely, they long since left. Because nothing gets top talent to leave like large scale high paid diversity hire program.
Top tier people want to focus on their work. Diversity hires want to focus on politics which led to their hire in the work place. These two views are irreconcilable, as latter will continue to attack the former for wanting to ignore politics and focusing on work.
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True. John Carmack left for exactly those reasons.
The Higher They Go (Score:2)
The harder they fall. Hopefully he gets everything he deserves.
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The harder they fall. Hopefully he gets everything he deserves.
Unfortunately, if Meta completely ceased to exist tomorrow, Mark Zuckerberg has already made so much money that he would continue to be enormously wealthy for the rest of his life.
Re: The Higher They Go (Score:3)
Unless it's considered fraudulent behavior.
But a lot of money someone has is tied into various kinds of assets like shares, often in the company they run/control.
Re: The Higher They Go (Score:2)
Crybabies (Score:1, Insightful)
Some of the most privileged people on the planet having an existential crisis.
Seriously, go fuck yourselves.
Office Space (Score:4, Insightful)
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The people that can do real work left Initech a long time ago. Where is the guy that automated the TPS reports and knew how to check the printer paper and press Continue? He left because the bureaucracy prevented him from kicking ass.
Completely predictable (Score:4, Insightful)
Meta=Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg hasn’t been able to succeed at anything other than ad sales. That’s not really meant to be an attack on the guy - he’s one of the worlds best ad-men to have ever lived. But he hasn’t been able to replicate that impressive feat anywhere else. He tried hard with VR but failed miserably. I don’t really blame him. It’s just that the tech needs about 50 more years of development before it’s ready for the big time. Who wants to wear 3 pounds of headgear just so that they can experience motion sickness and eye strain headaches?
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It's their business plan (Score:1)
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Well they pretty much did [axios.com]:
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Re: nothing (Score:2)
Don't forget - users are the product.
Even if you buy something Facebook aggregates your transaction.
Bloat⦠lots of bloat. (Score:2)
I worked for a company that for many years squandered the cash cow to buy failing technology companies in the hope they did better. The bloat was real. People playing ping pong, people doing something, but it wasnâ(TM)t work or at least work of any value. Our stock lingered in the $28-32 range for at least 1 if not 2 decades.
We get bought out. Layoffs come. No one plays ping pong any more. All the low value work still gets done.
My CEO says someone told him he runs a big company. He objected,
Re:Bloat⦠lots of bloat. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, Meta, Google, etc., way over hired. And they will have to adjust.
Overhiring != mismanaging.
I've seen serious UI bugs at Facebook that caused catastophic impact for people who use their livestreaming functionality that had not gotten fixed after more than a year, and probably are still broken. I've seen Facebook broken on Safari on desktop for a week or more at a time in ways that make it impossible to post.
The problem in big tech isn't that there are too many people. They don't have *enough* people. The problem is that they are too big in general. So a tiny change means waiting half an hour for tests to run, because the systems are too d**n complex, with too many opportunities for a tiny change in one piece of code to break something on the opposite side of the company. And that's if there aren't resource shortages that make the tests take even longer.
Add to that a bunch of managers and directors squirreling away employees to expand the size of their fiefdoms while not necessarily working on the projects that are most critical for employees with a specific skill set, poor overall organization leading to two teams working on the same thing (or three or four or twelve), and higher-ups who understaff critical roles in the name of cost savings that end up causing wasted time (or worse) because nobody knows how to do something, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Oh, and don't forget averaging six or seven layers of management between you and anyone empowered to make significant budget decisions. That always creates extra fun when the people controlling the pursestrings have no idea how it is being used.
The normal way this gets solved is by letting the company go bankrupt and starting over. Unfortunately, what usually ends up happening these days is that they instead keep buying their competitors and folding them into the same giant org, thus screwing them up, too. And that is why Facebook/Meta still exists....
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Well, complexity is certainly a factor. Complexity is what kills technology (and societies, but that is another discussion).
Meta is metastasizing (Score:3)
He has conducted two rounds of cuts over the past six months, with two more to come; these will eliminate more than 21,000 people
"Meta" stands for "Metastasize", and yet more layoffs continues to prove it.
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Now look out for that troll (you know who you are) that's going to come and claim everything I just said is wrong.
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Before Meta, I was able to AT&T my mom and dad.
That sounds like a weird variant of BDSM torture.
Seriously, when did AT&T become a verb?
I don't ever want to hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the same time, some of Meta's top executives have moved away and are managing large parts of the Silicon Valley company from their new homes in places like London and Tel Aviv.
Is happening. There's no reason why people the rest of the company can't WFH.
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Indeed. The problem is _not_ bosses being in a different geolocation. Unless this is just some asshole trying to push an agenda, it is bosses not doing their jobs.
Having a reason to exist would be a good start. (Score:2)
Still boggles the mind (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of me just can't get over it takes tens of thousands of people to run a profile messaging website even a huge one with billions of users. I assume most of it must be caught up in the money making and mass cyber stalking machinery.
The logic of overstaffing (Score:5, Informative)
Its hard to see the logic of overstaffing when you are in it. What happens is that everyone is very busy. You can see a big machine with many moving parts, and you can see that it is generating lots of revenue, putting out lots of product, but unfortunately not making a profit on it.
Every time you propose to cut back, you are told that the particular units that you are wondering about are essential, and you are told quite specifically what they do and why it will be very damaging to close them.
This situation separates the managers from the players. The players issue an edict, through HR, that there are to be 10% or whatever reductions across the board. This does not work, because it does not address the core problem. The core problem is that the people really are mostly working very hard, but they are making the work for each other.
The way you get to the bottom of this, if you are a manager, is you identify people who understand the work flows. They will typically be in production departments. You ask them the very simple question: if you were to take over X department, how many of their people would you need to get the essentials done?
When you do this, the answers will astound you. You will be typically told that you need 3 or 4 people of the 100 now employed.
So your first step as a manager was to ask the question. Now comes the real test. Do you swallow hard and do it? Because, remember, you yourself are not going to understand the machine at a working level. Its going to be almost impossible for you to assess whether what you are being told is correct. You will of course probe, ask questions, try to figure out what your chosen guy is going to do with the 3 or 4, and what the other 97 were doing. But you will find it very difficult because the entire energy of the 100 has now gone into defending what they are doing and their existence itself as a unit without ever getting specific enough about it to allow someone to wonder whether its really essential or could be done more economically.
Sometimes you will get these decisions wrong. Most of the time however you will come in on Monday morning after HR has done their work, after all the emotion has vented itself, and there will be a profound sense of peace. The peace will be due to the fact that people can finally get on with their work without being endlessly distracted and interfered with by those who are now no longer around.
It wasn't their fault. This is one of the things that makes it so hard to take and to decide. They were all hired and joined in good faith and enthusiasm, and they are probably perfectly nice, smart, hard working people. Its just there were too many of them, all getting in each others way, and in the way of those who were trying to pull on the oars.
Well, sometimes they were hired in a spirit of empire building. And their hiring was enouraged by free money, as in zero interest rates, which gave an artificial boost to earnings by lowering all kinds of costs. For a while.
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Nice theory, but I think usually it is impossible. It's similar to trying to refactor a gigantic hunk of software, but with the added problem that the current subroutines have political clout.
Eventually, these organizations just die under their own weight. It's all part of a life cycle of tech companies. See e.g. Kodak, Xerox, IBM, RCA, AT&T.
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The problem you always run into is that one guy who knows how to hit the sticky widget just right to get it working again, and he's the guy you've just laid off - him and about 20 others who each specialized on making sticky widgets work. No matter how much you drive to a fully documented workflow, you always have sticky widgets that don't confirm to standard. Software abounds with them, and most of them originate from outside the owned code base (i.e., proprietary or OSS that you have to request correction
WTF? (Score:1)
Eff the greedy sociopaths.