Meta Starts Eliminating Jobs in Shift To Find AI Talent (msn.com) 49
Meta began notifying staff of job cuts on Monday, kick-starting a process that will terminate thousands of people as the company cracks down on "low-performers" and scours for new talent to dominate the AI race. From a report: Meta workers who were let go were notified via email, and the company is offering US-based employees severance packages that include 16 weeks of salary, in addition two weeks for each year of service, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details weren't public. Employees whose review merited a bonus will still get one, and staff will still receive stock awards as part of the upcoming vesting cycle later this month, the people said.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would cut 5% of its workforce -- as many 3,600 people -- with a focus on staff who "aren't meeting expectations," Bloomberg News first reported in mid-January. Affected US-based employees would be notified on Feb. 10, while international employees could learn later, Zuckerberg said last month. In a separate message to managers, the Facebook co-founder said the cuts would create headcount for the company to hire the "strongest talent."
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would cut 5% of its workforce -- as many 3,600 people -- with a focus on staff who "aren't meeting expectations," Bloomberg News first reported in mid-January. Affected US-based employees would be notified on Feb. 10, while international employees could learn later, Zuckerberg said last month. In a separate message to managers, the Facebook co-founder said the cuts would create headcount for the company to hire the "strongest talent."
Name Change (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder if they'll change their name again, since the Metaverse fad has quietly died, and everyone shifted to AI
That's why I call it Meta[stasize].
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Maybe Faicebook. That's obnoxious enough that it could just work.
"Strongest talent" As in H-1Bs? (Score:1)
We have heard this all before. Last year had two H-1B lotteries, each of them having 100,000 people coming in, every one of those visa holders putting an American on the employment roles.
This losing the bottom 5% is stupid. This is what managers are supposed to be doing, as this is something taught in MBA school, and a requirement to get the degree, how to find and weed out low performers.
Just let management do what they need to, no need for these layoffs, unless a company is just cloaking the job sheddin
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MBAs are taught to get the most bang for the buck...
So yeah, the H1Bs are almost certainly safe
They're cheap
Nothing is more expensive than a cheap programmer (Score:3)
MBAs are taught to get the most bang for the buck... So yeah, the H1Bs are almost certainly safe They're cheap
While not universally known, it is well known that nothing is more expensive than a cheap programmer. Someone overseas may be 1/3 the cost, but if it takes him 4x as long to do the job...you lost money. Most big tech firms know this, hence why they have a mix of offices over the globe. Otherwise, they would have left the valley long ago. They could set up shop 2h away for far cheaper...in shitty cities...or just move all operations to the Philippines. They maintain offices in high cost areas purely for
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MBAs are taught to get the most bang for the buck... So yeah, the H1Bs are almost certainly safe They're cheap
While not universally known, it is well known that nothing is more expensive than a cheap programmer. Someone overseas may be 1/3 the cost, but if it takes him 4x as long to do the job...
It's a win-win solution for programmers. One job for the cheap programmer to write code, and that creates two more jobs to fix the parts that don't work!
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A CEO once told us, "you can get 1 guy in Silicon Valley, 2 guys in Europe, or 4 guys in India." He didn't even mind words there. And you need 10 guys in India to do the job anyway, and all of them will have two full time jobs with different companies. Some are smart, but they're overworked and underpaid.
This isn't new though. A friend wanted me to come to his company and I interviewed, and afterwards was told that they went to two guys with no experience instead of me (though I wasn't demanding much as
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You mean I could be an English speaking programmer in the Philippines?
I would have to consider it.
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Are they?
I can't claim to be very familiar with the legislation but I thought they were supposed to have the same starting salary as resident or citizen.
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Why import H1Bs when they could be hired at lower costs in their native countries?.
You can exploit them more thoroughly if you can threaten them with deportation if they lose their job. Plus it has a depressive effect on local wages, allowing you to get the local talent cheaper.
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It's more difficult for an employer to fire someone outside of the United States. Employment at-will [mostly] only exists in the United States. The rest of the world uses the "Just Cause" employment standard. In most countries you would need to document the poor performance, as well as disclose the real reasons for firing the employee. Additionally, there would be a notice period for any layoff unless it was for gross misconduct. In the united states, you can just say " Your services are no longer requir
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You can threaten them with being fired regardless of where they are.
A person who comes here on an H1B specifically wants to come to the US. They are often using it as the first step on a path to citizenship. They have unrooted their life in their home country and come here at great personal expense. Losing the job and being expelled flushes all of that down the toilet. Employers have these people at a huge disadvantage and they know it. It's massively more leverage than just firing someone working remotely. You have no fear that an H1B will ever report you for violati
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Maybe this will improve in the next couple of decades as there will be fewer and fewer young engineers in countries with low birth rates. If AI doesn't get in the way and make us all redundant, there could be fierce competition for this resource.
At that point it might not be a good deal to go to America with its "business friendly" employment laws such as employment at-will , and instead choose a country with better labor laws.
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Yes and no. I do embedded systems, and remote workers are a pain to deal with. Constantly shipping stuff back and forth, they don't have qualified labs to use, they try to do it on the cheap by testing on just one model instead of all variants, etc. And worse, once you've got the overseas guy who understands it, he leaves and you have to train a replacement all over again. This works for web devs but that's not what all programmers do.
Also the guy in Bangalore is often working two full time jobs, or 4 ha
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... no need for these layoffs, unless a company is just cloaking the job shedding for picking up more H-1Bs.
I came here to suggest that's exactly what's happening, prompted by the line in TFS that says "the cuts would create headcount for the company to hire the 'strongest talent'". To me, that translates directly as "we now have an administration which supports and even encourages us in firing citizens so we can bring in cheaper, easier-to-abuse hires from India".
I see the generous-seeming termination packages being given out as merely an insurance policy. In effect they're saying "this Constitution-defying radi
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I see the generous-seeming termination packages being given out as merely an insurance policy. In effect they're saying "this Constitution-defying radical-governance experiment is very new, so we don't want to burn all our bridges just yet". But if the new administration continues to wipe its ass with the Constitution while facing no effective opposition, then the next round of layoffs will be "Boom! You're gone - no severance, no package, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out".
I don't see how these severance packages have anything to do with the current administration in Washington DC. Meta has already embraced the me-too-isms of eliminating fact-checking and DEI programs, effectively falling in line with the messaging from Trump's White House. Why would they waffle on severance packages? I don't recall that Trump has said anything about them.
As for severance vs. no severance ... companies send a message to prospective employees when they have a history of offering offer severanc
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Severance packages are also never mandatory. I know people who stuck with a job and weren't looking for a new one, even though it was clear that huge cuts were coming, maybe even bankruptcy, because they naively assumed that they'd get a severance package when laid off. The sole reason for severance packages is because of the "you won't sue us" paper you sign in order to get it.
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I see the generous-seeming termination packages being given out as merely an insurance policy..
Severance packages are always just a means of enticing employees to sign a separation agreement: You promise not to sue them, share confidential information or client lists, or say bad things about them in the future -and they give you money.
Paying out a little bit to everyone dismissed is cheap. Dealing with angry former employees is expensive. The terms in the separation agreement are enforceable in court -a threat that is sufficient to silence most.
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Thanks to you, ClickOnThis, and the AC for informative corrections. I learn a lot here by posting stuff in unaware ignorance and getting worthwhile feedback.
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The purpose of "rank and yank" is to compel managers to discard this deadwood, and it might work that way once or twice, but what quickly happens is the incentives for employees and managers radically shift - top performers no longer want to be on teams that are already full of competent people. People hoard work and backstab to be seen as better than their colleagues. People see mediocre coworkers as ablative armor instead of colleagues. Managers intentionally hire duds to protect the existing team members in the next round of layoffs.
And the people considering applying for jobs know this, so anyone who is plagued by any amount of imposter syndrome, including a lot of very good engineers, will refuse to even apply, because they will always worry that they'll be hired to fire. So now your recruiting pipeline basically dries up, and you've fired a whole bunch of competent engineers to make room for superstars who won't give you the time of day.
This is compounded by the perception that companies only do layoffs if they're in trouble, which
don't fire people on an monday (Score:1)
We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
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is that true for remote workers too?
if you fired me on a Monday after I made the commute all the way to HQ, i would very likely go postal.
call me up on a Sunday afternoon to tell me I've been canned & won't have to make the 2 hr trip, that would likely be a quite different reaction
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And if you could just not come in on Sunday, or any other day, that'd be great.
has the ai told them (Score:3)
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As long as the stock price goes up they don't care.
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Oh ya, people care about the metaverse, it's likely the only place they'll ever be able to afford a home.
Not meeting expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes it shouldn't be allowed because the employer looking to fill an open position can use the candidate's the date of separation, and past news articles to deduce whether or the layoff was for performance or not.
In fact, this should be treated as a form of defamation.
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This is why people like Suckerburg should be sued into oblivion. If we had any type of labor protection in the US or at companies like Bookface, there would be no firing people willy-nilly in order to gain a bump in share price. Which is all that's happening here. The talking avatar that is Zuckerburg has to constantly generate press in order to get the market excited about the stock he owns most of. Otherwise his value tanks and he's no longer the 3rd or 4th (reported) richest being on the planet.
Re: Not meeting expectations (Score:2)
Re:Mmmmm... learn from HP (Score:5, Interesting)
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For AI, most people are untrainable. As a starting point, it is the same as asking, is it possible to train all students to get an A in math. Even this seems be hard and studying is easy compared to doing new scientific discoveries.
Low-Hanging Fruit (Score:5, Interesting)
They might want to start with that low-performing employee who tossed away over $50 billion over the last 4 years on a metaverse bet that virtually (ha!) nobody gives a crap about.
A metaverse that (at least initially) was touted as the future of work. Oh, the irony!
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Imagine renaming your entire company because you think your Second Life reboot is going to do any better lol.
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Why? Normally companies would promote a risk taking idea of creating a new market. That it didn't take off is hardly a problem, and what definitely isn't a problem is spending $50bn. That's only a problem if you are a poor company.
The rat race (Score:3)
How to ruin a business in 10 easy steps (Score:2)
As an alternative, tech workers must unionize and form worked-owned co-ops that are focused on long-term stability rather than short-term profits and consultant business fads.
We can infer ... (Score:3)
That Meta will select layoff victims "with a focus on staff who 'aren't meeting expectations'" suggests that they are intending to include workers who do meet or exceed expectations. But it gets worse than that, as there are reports [businessinsider.com] that workers who had good track records of performance reviews were suddenly downgraded without explanation, presumably to meet the quota for the mass layoff.
Zuckerberg said "the cuts would create headcount for the company to hire the 'strongest talent.'" So, the same executives and managers that led the current hiring of workers that now need to be laid off will once again lead the new wave of hiring. They botched the last wave of hiring and are now counted on to do it right this time.
By creating headcount, Zuckerberg really means that Meta will save enough money to hire new workers. However, last year, Meta spent $30 billion for stock buybacks, money that was effectively wasted since the $30 billion is immaterial given the total capitalization and amount of annual stock transactions. For some reason, Zuckerberg and Meta couldn't figure out how to invest any of that $30 billion in future growth, even though they desparately now need cash to fund the new wave of hiring. What this reveals is a lack of respect for and valuation of workers ... in addition to incompetence about how to strategically plan for growth and how to effectively manage financial resources.