Meta Is Laying Off Employees After 2023's 'Year of Efficiency' (theverge.com) 66
According to The Verge, Meta has "begun laying off employees across various departments, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs." From the report: Rather than a mass, companywide layoff, these smaller cuts seem to coincide with reorganizations of specific teams. Some Meta employees have started posting that they've been laid off. Among them is Jane Manchun Wong, who gained notoriety for reporting on unannounced features coming to apps before joining the Threads team in 2023. Meta laid off 11,000 employees in 2022 and then cut 10,000 more people as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" in 2023.
Further reading: Tech Layoffs Highest Since Dot-Com Crash
Further reading: Tech Layoffs Highest Since Dot-Com Crash
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Qanon had to be a govt operation from one of the intelligence communities. Too 'flat earth' like, spouting out nonsense and seeing who laps it up.
Qanon could have started as some teenagers being sarcastic assholes online, and there just happened to be enough dumbasses around to pick up the thread and run with it. We may never know where it started. But I wouldn't doubt there were some big powers playing the fiddles once the band started to rock. Too many fucked up things went down to not believe someone made use of the moron brigade once they formed up and became a knot of stupid teabagging society, civility, and intelligible discourse relentlessly t
DonNull (Score:2)
Trump hasn't explained his "really terrific plan". Tariffs are not an econ booster.
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Harris needs to come up with something to put herself in the news, anything to give someone a reason to vote for her. It doesn't have to be deep (or even real), it just has to be something engaging.
Harris, get into the meme circuit!
Re: DonNull (Score:1)
Whoa there...
Cool it with the anti-semitism, buddy!
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Yes she has: waking up from one's Fox-induced coma.
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Fox sets the narratives for the rightwing copy cat memers.
Re: DonNull (Score:2)
Fox is no longer right wing enough for some people. The training wheels have come off for the fascists.
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X.com decorates the bs some more
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Trump does a really good job of it. Every candidate wants to act like they support gun rights because it's important in the swing sta
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Harris hasn't been able to come up with an answer to "saving cats from being eaten."
Harris does not own a cat or dog. She is petless.
Walz has a cat.
Trump has no pets.
Vance's family had a cat, but it isn't clear if they still have it. Vance has two dogs.
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Re: DonNull (Score:2)
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At the end of the day, most presidential election results where an incumbent is running are based on people's bank accounts (how have they fared after last 4 years), and get-out-the-vote at the margins, not on the candidates policies.
However, as far as policies goes, Trump planning to increase tarrifs and reduce corporate taxes, pushing increased prices and taxes onto consumers instead, is not what most people want to hear. Good for Musk, but not good for most of us!
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Re: DonNull (Score:2)
Current tariffs are fine. Well maybe drop the chicken tariffs and start importing light trucks that Americans can afford.
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Harris is on the side of the consumer and working/middle class. Trump is on the side of big business and upper class.
Starting a trade war isn't the way to reduce prices or strengthen American businesses. It didn't work for Trump when he was president before, and it won't work if he were re-elected and tries again.
There was an interesting editorial out today from one of the executives responsible for marketing "The Apprentice" TV show (which is where a whole generation of young people got their impression of
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Harris is on the side of the consumer and working/middle class.
OK, so you believe propaganda.
Starting a trade war isn't the way to reduce prices or strengthen American businesses. It didn't work for Trump when he was president before
What do you think Biden did to tariffs? [whitehouse.gov]
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So let me get this right, Trump - who is running for president - says that he WILL increase tarrifs (a LOT), and that doesn't bother you, but you do care about the actions of Biden - who is NOT running for president.
okie dokie.
btw, you guys normally like to call Harris and her supporters leftists - do you even understand what that means? Trump and his billionaire union-hating supporters like Musk and the silicon valley elite are at the opposite end of the political spectrum.
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So let me get this right, Trump - who is running for president - says that he WILL increase tarrifs (a LOT), and that doesn't bother you, but you do care about the actions of Biden - who is NOT running for president.
No, you got it wrong. I just don't see it as a differentiator. Both presidents, and the entire government actually, are trying to disengage from China. The reason is because China has been attacking most of its neighbors.
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There's actually quite a difference between Trump and Biden, which I'd expect to continue under Harris.
Trump says he's anti-China, but then him and his family continue to have products manufactured there. Musk (who Trump suggests may have a role in his cabinet) builds Teslas in China, not to mention attempting to build robots to replace American factory workers.
Biden is more meaningful action than Trump, and is working to reduce US dependence on China, such as his CHIPS act whereby he is bringing back semic
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Hold on, Tex (Score:5, Insightful)
The tech industry is sometimes independent of the rest of the economy. In the late 2000's when the "mortgage recession" was raging, tech was doing well because the mobile boom triggered by the iPhone and iPad.
It's heavily driven by new product categories or breakthroughs. Similarly tech busts may not match the general economy either but rather when enough investors realize profits don't match the hype, or see other key investors running away. The "AI winter" (first AI bubble pop) happened when the general economy was okay.
And Meta just plain focked up with VR shit.
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the weakening of laws and SEC has seen an unprecedented and growing repurchasing of company stocks by the companies instead of granting raises to employees or putting it back into the company to improve itself, has been a major move by multiple companies. Ultimate goal? To repurchase stocks to remove themselves from the stock market and making themselves private while maintaining h
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Its obvious none of this is related to anything economic and it is VERY obvious that inflation is related to corporate greed. the weakening of laws and SEC has seen an unprecedented and growing repurchasing of company stocks by the companies instead of granting raises to employees or putting it back into the company to improve itself, has been a major move by multiple companies. Ultimate goal? To repurchase stocks to remove themselves from the stock market and making themselves private while maintaining high profitability and granting themselves rights like not having to report on profits to the public and obfuscate their skeezy practices from the public, customers, and their employees.
Huh.
Sounds like to me when you have a society that not only tolerates that abuse, but fucking votes for it (Board elections and otherwise), then it’s pretty obvious this has everything to do with the economic policy that is not only supported by society but legal.
You know what happens when you “threaten” Greed N. Corruption with mere words and no action? Greed and corruption happens. Shocking to find human nature unchanged for thousands of years. You'd probably be able to sell this bett
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it is VERY obvious that inflation is related to corporate greed.
Businesses set prices to maximize profits. That is what they have always done and always will do.
Is that "greed"? Of course, but it isn't anything new or different.
We had low inflation for two decades when businesses were just as greedy.
Greed didn't change. What changed was a flood of stimulus money into the economy.
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That gravy train has ended. Pretty much all tech company R&D departments have been shuttered, and the only thing the holding corporations or capital groups want from companies is income results this quarter, no R&D, no forward looking... they want companies to eat their seed corn, and then people wonder why there is no real harvest.
If one looks around, the cool startups with stuff popping up like Docker, and other DevOps related tools are all gone. There are no killer apps, the ones that people sa
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The tech industry is sometimes independent of the rest of the economy. In the late 2000's when the "mortgage recession" was raging, tech was doing well because the mobile boom triggered by the iPhone and iPad.
2008 is still documented in the history books for a reason. It wasn’t just “mortgages” that caused that financial meltdown, creating the idiocy of Too Big To Fail. It was the financial fuckery era triggered by the eggheads that got laid off during the crisis before that (the Dot Bomb), and out of boredom and greed they invented “fintech”.
Which will likely contribute to an even larger crash, since we’re so very fucking good at that.
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And Meta just plain focked up with VR shit.
In what way? They've spent less on R&D as a proportion of revenu on this as many other tech companies. All the while delivering multiple products, services, and a whole platform that developers are working on.
It's important to be specific. Meta's stupid expenses weren't VR shit, it was that stupid Metaverse - everyone wants to only see each other in a shitty virtual world - bullshit. Much of the rest of the investments however haven't actually been a fuckup in the slightest being the clear leader in the
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I have no idea what they are doing at Meta since FB/Insta haven't really changed in forever. Not sure why they aren't happy just to operate the business and collect cash.
Been hearing this talking point from Russia lately (Score:3, Interesting)
What we are seeing is the effects of monopoly. For a long long time these companies have been hiring people to do basically nothing in order to keep skilled people away from potential competitors.
At the moment all of the attention is on the grocery stores because two major grocery stores are trying to merge so it's taking up all the regulators time. This leaves the big boys like Facebook feeling saf
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For a long long time these companies have been hiring people to do basically nothing in order to keep skilled people away from potential competitors.
Yeah. It's also because CEOs are copycats, and do whatever other tech companies do. It's "conventional wisdom" that as soon as you go public, you have to start hiring a lot of programmers. Zuck left hiring problems to Sheryl Sandberg, and she copied Google. Larry and Sergey left the hiring to Eric.
This leaves the big boys like Facebook feeling safe doing mass layoffs because they know that any competition that crops up as a result of those engineers going off getting other jobs is going to be easily crushed.
After Twitter started laying people off in an insane manner, other tech companies started doing it too. Not because they had too many people, but because they are copycats. (Of course, I don't know the internal th
There are actual denititions, and there's public.. (Score:3)
perception/opinion. Back in 1980 the Carter administration tried using narrow dictionary definitions to defend itself from arguments over how bad the economy was. While campaigning in that race for the presidency, Ronald Reagan famously said [paraphrased]"a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job". This was not, of course the strict definition of these economic terms, but it sure hit the mark with lots of voters
We are still producing tons of food and medicine (Score:1)
No matter how you run the numbers we are not in a depression or a recession. Economy is still growing and we are still producing more real goods than we had last quarter every quarter.
The problem you're describing is income inequality. That has nothing to
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What you seeing and what people are feeling is massive wealth concentration that is the direct results of big government policies. Complex regulation that only mega corps with entire legal departments can comply with, to big to fail, high cost insurance policies because they can't price risk so people can't get the catastophic coverage they need and have to choose between placing their entire family at risk of indigence and their would be entrepreneurship.
Wealth concentration is worse than in the guilded a
Big government did not create income inequality (Score:1)
Billionaires and members of the American ruling class are what created the current income inequality problems. Big government is why rural communities have electricity. Jesus man it's like nobody even remembers the TVA. And I don't mean the time variance authority.... Sigh.
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You blame your anal warts on Biden.
Re: Bidenomics!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump is mostly at fault for the tech downturn. His new tax regime is absolutely crushing to startups. And the pandemic boom/bust is mostly from his mishandling of the entire situation.
Not that Harris has a plan to fix this, but blame should lay at the feet of the faulty.
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"Not that Harris has a plan to fix this, but blame should lay at the feet of the faulty."
Yes, Biden and the Democrats. Trump wanted to be liked and listened to the all of the Democrats that wanted to continue with the lock downs that didn't work, destroying many local businesses in the process. Biden promised to 'build back better' and not only closed one of the largest domestic pipelines his first day, which contributed to the inflation, but did nothing in the mean time to actually help our economy.
If you
The layoffs will continue (Score:5, Insightful)
until the morale ^H^H^H^H^H^H profitability improves.
Over-hiring during good times and firing during bad times is a sign of management failure, and short term pressure from wall street investors doesn't help.
You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term. You'll end up hiring more folks in the future once you see your competitors and your own business demand pick up, and you'll pay for it in the form of increased salaries and signing bonuses due to market dynamics.
In a normal economic cycle ,good times and bad times don't last forever. The only exceptions would be a calamity such as a long depression or nuclear holocaust.
Honestly they'll continue until interest rates com (Score:3)
Every few years all the kids leave Facebook because that's where their parents are and move somewhere else. Facebook then buys out or runs out of business those new
Re: Honestly they'll continue until interest rates (Score:2)
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until the morale ^H^H^H^H^H^H profitability improves.
Over-hiring during good times and firing during bad times is a sign of management failure, and short term pressure from wall street investors doesn't help.
You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term. You'll end up hiring more folks in the future once you see your competitors and your own business demand pick up, and you'll pay for it in the form of increased salaries and signing bonuses due to market dynamics.
In a normal economic cycle ,good times and bad times don't last forever. The only exceptions would be a calamity such as a long depression or nuclear holocaust.
until the morale ^H^H^H^H^H^H profitability improves.
Over-hiring during good times and firing during bad times is a sign of management failure, and short term pressure from wall street investors doesn't help.
You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term. You'll end up hiring more folks in the future once you see your competitors and your own business demand pick up, and you'll pay for it in the form of increased salaries and signing bonuses due to market dynamics.
In a normal economic cycle ,good times and bad times don't last forever. The only exceptions would be a calamity such as a long depression or nuclear holocaust.
Well, there's the reality, which you describe, then there's the mentality of the C-Suites. In their minds, firing lots of people now will lead to being able to re-hire them for much, MUCH less in the future, especially if they can make them go without a job for a year or a little more. They don't seem to understand that these people won't just sit at home waiting for that phone call, but will actively go out and pursue other opportunities and the market is not going to allow for people to come back for less
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$591/week unemployment benefits are nothing anyone would want to be laid off for. Especially when rent is over $2000 anywhere, and unemployment benefits are taxable.
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Meta, fire them all! (Score:3)
Problem solved.
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New problem created. As much as everyone hates Facebook and the fucker who runs Meta, much of the world has built up a service dependency on them. Many countries don't even function without WhatsApp. Yes countries, not people or companies, but whole countries use it as a primary communication mechanism.
Weening us off this would take many years. Thanos snapping our fingers and making sue that all Meta employees are in the half that disappear would be highly chaotic to the world.
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Fine, they get six months advance notice. THEN fire them all!
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Try again, core communication systems take years to migrate somewhere. In the case of things such as WhatsApp we're not even talking about you texting your mom, we're talking about quite advanced APIs used for automation of data transfer.
Fire a million (Score:2)
Fire a million. [youtube.com]
Nick (Score:4, Interesting)
Still they have the resources to hire the former UK vice Sir Nick Clegg as their Brussels lobbyist who attempts to blackmail the European Commission with AI. A real communications expert. You see, real talent does not get fired.
That must be mental efficiency (Score:2)