Free advice to future managers:<p>You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting.<p>Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over <i>months</i>. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
Never fun for those impacted, but given Meta’s poor performance this is expected. The history book is being written now on if Meta was a brilliant business for the ages or always destined to decline into a has-been tech play. Ironically now Zuckerberg is the old guard with stale ideas that he railed against so hard when Facebook was founded. My grandparents and their friends are currently the most active users on my Facebook feed. Most under 40 in my circle have left and most under 25 I know don’t even have an account.<p>If Facebook can turn things around then that would be truly impressive. Right now it’s on a slow march to the sidelines of has-been tech. I don’t think anyone is buying the whole metaverse thing, which just smells like someone missed the memo on Second Life. Facebook bet the farm there and the crops and livestock are looking rather ill.
I know that working in tech can warp your sense of reality, but it's really, really hard to imagine starting an email in which I announce that I'm laying off 10,000 people -- the entire population of my hometown and then some -- with "Meta is building the future of human connection."<p>I just can't tell a story in which I would end up being a person who does that. It's too alien.
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
Meta is undergoing a standard phase transition. It was innovation fuelled previously, but now it is value fuelled (milk the existing machine, take care of regulators, be part of the establishment). Intel and IBM are similar examples.<p>So Zuckerberg, to prevent this, has the right strategy - the pirates inside the organisation strategy. Jobs did this with the Mac project. The question mark really is whether the Metaverse can deliver to take over from the Social Media platforms it has. Even if you accept the promise of Metaverse, according to Carmack the execution has been poor. Normally you just buy your way out with promising startups when execution is poor but the regulators will be heavy with Meta nowadays.<p>Meta has star power with AI/ML. But on Metaverse there isn't much consumer data to process (yet). So its innovation vector can't be realised.<p>This effectively means the stars of AI/ML won't help Meta into the future. If they leave, it could be a good thing (if we are taking the value-fuelled hypothesis as their future).<p>Meta I think will switch to a MBA-led approach to maximise existing value, shed its research aspirations, and switch to hiring the best mechanical/devices/hardware talent it can to improve execution on Metaverse.<p>Under this appraisal of Meta, broad and wide layoffs, letting the superstars go is the right thing for the company. Unlocked from Meta, those engineers will forge the next great wave of tech companies. The future will be made over the next few months as those start-up fevered ideas will actually get a footing. So I am most hopeful despite the bitter pill of current economic realities. In the short term there is real pain, particularly those relying on visas or the generous healthcare provisions from the company.
For context:<p>"In 2020, Meta added over 13,000 employees, a 30% increase, and the biggest year of hiring in the company’s history. In 2021, it added another 13,000 workers. By total worker numbers, it was the two biggest years of expansion in Facebook’s short history."<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-growth-than-tech-peers-no-layoffs-yet.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...</a>
The word "efficiency" appears 20 times in this article. Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency - the layers, the fat, and the lethargy - came from. Nor does he explain the logic of culling employees now.<p>These are not the words of someone who has learned lessons or who is interested in telling the truth.<p>So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. And spending on advertising has cratered as businesses everywhere have pulled in their horns in response to their own falling revenues. Facebook lived large during the fake boom. It hired way too many people and a built a bloated, middle-heavy organization that is poorly-suited to the task ahead: taking back territory it's lost to smaller, nimbler competitors. Facebook management bought the economic lies being told hook, line, and sinker.<p>The party's now over and Facebook faces major headwinds, including savage competition, declining revenue, and the aftermath of a hiring orgy gone wrong.
Ignore the fluff piece. The reality is you're being laid off because the company can make more money by taking your salary and buying government bonds.<p>When your team got spun up to work on this project, interest rates were low and it was a sound investment to try this project out. If it was successful, it might have made/saved a moderate amount of money. It made sense to invest in it, compared to all the other options available at the time.<p>But alas, inflation soared and interest rates rose faster than predicted, so now the bonds are a better bet than you and your team doing whatever it was you were doing. According to this spreadsheet, it wasn't nearly as profitable as the bonds.
Sorry for the ones losing their jobs. Meta has been mismanaged for the past few years.<p>Focusing on Metaverse while TikTok is continuing to increase user engagement is senseless. If I were Zuck, I would do three things:<p>0) Wind down Metaverse investment. Throw it back into research. Kill the product. Take the loss. He has controlling interest in the stock so he probably gets a few mulligans. So long as he presents a competent forward looking strategy, I think the investor base will still give him a few more chances.<p>1) Narcissism 2.0 or really, Instagram 2.0 - Merge Instagram with Reels. This is hard. The experience/monetization/product has to be just right to not cannibalize existing instagram advertising revenue or user traction. It would be easy to fall down the multiple message app mess at Google. The benefit of merging is to own the best global platform for every narcissistic creator on the planet - from movie stars to your dog. Advertisers want eyeballs. Narcissists want eyeballs, some want money. Truly understand why creators are on TikTok and entice them back to a better Facebook property.<p>2) Lobby to get TikTok banned. If Zuck can't defeat TikTok on product development then he can get it banned. Spend dollars lobbying politicians and demand results.<p>I think Zuck still has a number of winning plays available to him.
Last week: Post surfaces saying that on 3/14 there'd be a mass layoff of managers & directors. Many people react that no way is this true<p>3/14: Zuck posts that they're making their orgs "flatter", in other words laying off a bunch of managers & directors
Could someone save me from reading through it - Did Zuck take full responsibility?
I really sleep better when CEOs state that they take full responsibility for massive layoffs.
A lot of snippets in here that feel like Mark is stating some uncomfortable truths for many who have enjoyed the world of tech during the low interest rate environment.<p>"In person work is more effective"<p>> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely<p>"To remain a company that values tech we must lower the influence of people who don't value it"<p>> As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.
Zuckerberg is obsessed with cornering the market for the Next Big Thing. First it was radio, then TV, computers, cellphones, what could the next big thing be? It's got to be VR... because Mark can't think of anything else it could be.<p>So even though people aren't willing to strap bricks to their faces now, once they understand there's no other Next Big Thing coming, they'll shrug and pick up a VR headset.<p>Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.
Does anyone else find the irony in this statement from a company that is pushing for a Virtual Reality social world since almost the beginning?<p>> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.<p>> As part of our Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on understanding this further and finding ways to make sure people build the necessary connections to work effectively. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.
What is the value in announcing that layoffs will take place over a period of months instead of doing it all at once? That seems like the worst possible outcome for both the company and it's employees. Morale is going to be terrible and Meta is going to be left with everyone who hasn't (or wasn't able) to switch jobs.
All the talk to a flatter structure, being lean, focusing on the tech actually makes me want to work at Meta. If only they would change their leetcode interview process!
> garbage collect unnecessary processes,<p>I may be wrong and he may be actually referring to optimizing garbage collection on their servers, but this sounds like a callous and heartless way to refer to firing 10k people.
Dear Metamates,<p>I've had to make some hard decisions, to fire ten thousand of you. But don't worry I take full responsibility for this failure.
>Our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more.<p>All the tools in the world but you can't have a quiet office
Zuck should lay himself off, he's directly responsible for most of the problems the company is having right now. He endlessly makes the wrong choices for the company on privacy, UX, staffing and decides to do a botched pivot to VR instead of trying to improve any of that.<p>He has lost the trust of his users and someone new needs to focus on restoring that as a precondition for anything else they do being successful. Facebook isn't Civ 5 (one of his favorite games) but he operates it like it is, and if he keeps treating FB like a video game full of NPCs he'll have plenty of time for the next Civ game.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35100251" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35100251</a><p>Flagged of course, "no way this is true" etc
“Year of Efficiency”? Hoo boy… is Zuck picking up his management strategies from a podcast/YouTube channel? I mean, I shouldn’t/wouldn’t be surprised by that but still, wow. Playing in the kiddie pool.<p>(Strongly reminiscent of the Cortex podcast’s “yearly themes”. Which I like! But… I’m not running one of the world’s largest companies, am I?)
>and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere<p>Where? Just FAANGS are giving that level of salary and FAANGS are not hiring.
In the "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" section, looks like they're setting the groundwork to force a back-to-office plan.
>Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.<p>Looks like the age of pure remote work is done for big corporates!
> We are a technology company, and our ultimate output is what we build for people. Everything else we do is in service of that. As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists. As we add different groups, our product teams naturally hire more roles to handle all the interactions with those other groups. If we only rebalanced the product teams towards engineering, those leaner product teams would be overwhelmed by the volume of interactions from other groups. As part of the Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles. It’s important for all groups to get leaner and more efficient to enable our technology groups to get as lean and efficient as possible. We will make sure we continue to meet all our critical and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently.<p>How should this be interpreted? They're getting rid of all the Agile Coaches?
Starts off saying how they're building tools to help people connect digitally as if they're there in person and the proceeds to say it's really shit and people should meet in person.<p>The whole in office is better thing is a farce, but how can you buy into a 'vision' when they don't believe it themselves.
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.<p>Realizing that this is an unpopular opinion, in person work is better for the business. Business decisions are being made around encouraging in person work, because relationships help at work.
I think ChatGPT will include the phrase "difficult decision" and the word "talented" on the task to write a layoff communique. The "flat structure" goes along the Elon "show me the code" rant when he acquired Twitter. IMHO managers are the spotters in the race and drivers are the coders and dev-ops the mechanics. To ask that the spotters have to take a few laps around the course during the race is idiotic right? You can replace the spotters with machines as long as you don't mind a few drivers going up in fiery crashes every now and then. I've seen that implemented. It requires a lot of work-visas.
I a lot of ways this feels to me like Zuckerberg taking back the company after the Sheryl Sandberg years. There is no adult supervision any more and Mark is now unrestrained in living out his geek ideology that says engineering led companies are better and layers of middle management are fundamentally wasted. I have some sympathy for this viewpoint but I think it is all too easy to under estimate how special the whole culture of an organisation needs to be to actually make fully engineering led leadership work. I am not sure you can impose it from top down. But it will be very interesting to see how he goes at it.
This seems focused on making meta a more efficient organization that can execute faster and react more quickly. So that's good for the company if it's done well. But even so, I see further problems for meta.<p>It's just not clear how the metaverse becomes something at the scale meta needs it to be to justify the R&D or to make an impact on its business.<p>To me it looks like a technology really takes off when it gives people a <i>lighter-weight</i> way to communicate and connect. The telephone takes off compared to writing letters because it is a much easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Messaging takes off relative to calling people on the telephone because it's an easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Social media, including Facebook take off relative to hanging out because it an easier more immediate way to tell people about things.<p>The new thing doesn't necessarily need to replace the old thing, it just needs to open up a new, easier, more immediate way for people to tell people about things.<p>The best I see is if meta can make itself the gatekeeper of the de facto standard platform for VR games/entertainment. That's potentially a pretty big business -- because maybe VR can take over AAA content and shows. But is it really big enough to sustain meta? (It seems far from certain they would end up in such an advantageous position, but Oculus is a good start.)
"[...] garbage collect unnecessary processes [...]" At least we know some parts of the post were actually written by Zuck himself, not the PR team.
It's a good reminder that you a nothing for the corporation, a nuisance, a cost, a necessary evil.<p>The moment they find a way to replace you and cut costs they will.<p>This means, don't bother working more than you have to, after all you are not working towards your own private jet, but you are building wealth of people who don't have your best interest in mind.
This whole schpeel has actually put me in a horrible mood.<p>I don't even have a FB account but every second line here is full of the type of gaslighting and bizspeak BS that absolutely nobody appreciates.<p>> We do this with AI to help you creatively express yourself and discover new content.<p>You mean destroy adolescent growing minds with more and more addictive short burst content from advertisers.<p>> but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.<p>So goodbye ethics councils, any semblance of internal discussion over our impact on the world.<p>> Profitability enables innovation.<p>Because investors LOVE taking risks on `innovation` during a downturn. /s<p>More like they will push harder the methods which make their bonus'.<p>Facebook/Meta has provided nothing beneficial long term, to the world. Let it burn.
So when are we going to finally recognize Meta as a failed/failing business? Laying off 10k employees for funies (after the prior layoffs) isn't exactly a great reflection on the business org in a long term view or that their financials are stable.
It is so ironic, that Facebook, the once sponsor of gems like Farmville to playfully interact with people and fostering discussions around lunch photos, totally lost sight of community building.<p>While today everybody wants to integrate GPT-4 into a customer facing app to increase community interaction and value to the customer, the company famous for its social graph has nothing to offer to foster integration or community building.<p>Even bing, the somewhat competitor now finally is the new shiny object and a direct thread to Google.<p>While Meta still wants to build its Metaverse, people immerse into everything that gets connected to GPT-4. GPT-4 is the real metaverse.<p>Ironic. Somewhat.
Good luck getting anyone to do any work while they wait for the news on whether they're axed over the next 1-2 months (or up to the end of the year!). These trickling layoffs absolutely kill morale. Do it all at once, seriously.
The obvious question here is why a social network considers itself to be primarily a technology company that should be led by technologists. It seems like Zuck is trying to pull a WeWork here.
Meta still has so much talent, especially in the AI space. I consider them probably just as talented as the deepmind folks, if not more so. They can still achieve world domination for sure.
"Let's just hire people and give them obnoxious compensation packages before another FAANG gets them" may not be a business strategy that works in the lean times.
It would probably be considered uncouth to send <i>Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible For Me To Want To Pay You</i>, but in a way it's at least an honest, non-corporate ipsum explanation. It's also much more fun to read.<p><a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-have-made-it-impossible-for-me-to-want-to-pay-you" rel="nofollow">https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...</a>
"garbage collect some processes" is an incredibly poor choice of words to use in a post about laying off 10,000 people through no fault of their own...
The most interesting bit of this letter to me is this one:<p>"Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week."
> Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.<p>So in total this means about 16% reduction from what Facebook was aiming to scale to in December 2022 (86k staff). I wish the investors had put Zuck in his place and killed the Metaverse concept early, but it looks like these cuts are across the board and not impacting any particular project.
> In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors.<p>So basically more rounds of layoffs to come?<p>> This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.<p>Sounds like they pulling the plug on remote work<p>Has Meta been found out as a company?
>We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.<p>Wow, that's a pretty long timeline from announcement to execution. Being told you <i>might</i> be laid off some time in the next 10 months. I guess they're hoping people quit?
I think I've posted this before - but can't find it.<p>We always used to joke that layoffs always come in threes.
The first one never cuts deep enough. People do the bare minimum.<p>The second one comes when everyone realises that the business actually is in trouble and does need saving.<p>The third one is needed as the business has been so badly damaged by the layoffs and is now bleeding cash.
Companies should share these updates in a short and concise way rather than posting such and nonsense articles. Sharing like this sounds really absurd. I tried to read it, but when I saw that he was talking about speeding up build systems at one point, I couldn't take it seriously and continue.
"As part of the Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles."<p>I found this interesting, I wonder what the optimal ratio is. If the ratio is too high then eng is going to be hit hard, if it is too low then other roles are going to be hit hard.
This is the 4th layoff announcement on which I've tried our Buzzword Bingo app:<p><a href="https://1fish2.github.io/buzzword-bingo/corp-bingo.html" rel="nofollow">https://1fish2.github.io/buzzword-bingo/corp-bingo.html</a><p>and still nothing! I think we need a new set of buzzwords.
I think it is fair to say that none of the large tech. companies except Apple managed to hire correctly. Should we also assume that they won’t be able to fire correctly?<p>I do believe problems about their talent pipeline or how they utilise it lays deeper than these hiring/firing sprees can solve.
Wow, so much negativity towards this announcement. This reaction is genuinely surprising because I found this post both inspirational and insightful. I hope there are others who feel the same way!<p>Maybe we can start a discussion on the content rather than our emotions from the headline?<p>Some of the best parts here:<p>> Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports. That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible.<p>> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster.<p>> we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.<p>> I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation.
> Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.<p>Wait so does that mean they'll end up with 10K less after hiring 5K folks? Which might imply that they'll be firing 15K people.
Quick Question: why do the layoffs take so long?
Like why is he saying for some groups it may take till the end of the year?
Internally, doesn't that mean nobody has any morale or gets any work done for a proper year, since everyone remains jaded and on edge?
It's weird that several large tech companies all need to fire around 10,000 people at the same time. It's almost like the number is completely arbitrary and they're all soullessly choosing profit over their people because they can.
It still blows my mind how many engineers are at Meta. What are they all doing? Seems pretty comfortable to say that they could lay off thousands more and probably notice no difference in the user experience or revenue of their products.
This idea of doing layoffs and then using it to fund stock buybacks is really catching on. We should call this “double booster” for stock prices even when company is clearly failing.
Hard to wrap my head around 10k people. Just how big is Meta? The email talks a lot about eliminating layers of management, does that mean most of the layoffs will be managers?
Looks like Zuck has totally lost touch if he thinks the high priority projects are "metaverse" and "ai" related. At this point FB is just his passion project.
> We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.
I asked ChatGPT about taking responsibility for the layoff, here is the response:<p>> The blog post does not explicitly state that Mark Zuckerberg takes full responsibility for the layoffs.
From a quick scan this looks great to me. Cut the middle managers, useless diversity teams, focus on tech and engineering. Hope they build something great again.
> we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services<p>That's either a lie, or Mark has a serious misunderstanding of what "better" means.
How do they have sooo many employees. They are running a few websites and a bunch of apps. I can understand how they would need a hundred people for that. They have a massive userbase. So I can understand how they would need a thousand people just to deal with tech at scale and support.<p>But how do you manage to have so many people that you can fire 10k ?! If I googled well, they appear to have 72k employees. Where did you find the management that thought having 72k employees is reasonable to operate a bunch of websites and apps ?!
does anyone know the rates of re-hiring at startups and smaller tech companies of all these big tech firms that overhired? in particular for software engineers. wondering the impact of the recession based on the scale of the company
meta is building the future of human connection, and as every student of neuroscience and brain development knows, sometimes in order to connect you also have to <i>dis</i> connect. in this essay I
> In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors.<p>I am curious what people think about this.
That's the reason we should nationalize facebook. Indeed, all the problems are coming from managers. We should better elect them and establish communism. Also, meta should make a clip with people dancing and singing and how great it is to be fired from FB.
"It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues..."<p>What kind of sociopath one has to be not to realize there's something very wrong about writing a piece like this?<p>It's almost like Mark or whoever put it together enjoyed doing it.
The fact that you can fire 10,000 people in a day without noticing just proves that capitalist efficiency is a lie. You still get the same stupid waste of resources as with any other system.<p>What do any of these people even do? Facebook hasn't changed in the last 10 years. Instagram etc are all finished products. How can you have hundreds of thousands of people in a company when you don't make anything?<p>You have to give them something to do so you get them to make a new UI because everyone always needs a new UI. But then oh no we need new servers for development so we need a new server team. And then we need a testing team for testing the UI and then we need HR for managing the new teams and accountants for managing the expanded payroll... And yet none of them actually achieve anything because it's a made-up project.
People said twitter would fall over after all the influencers got fired but its still relatively functioning fine.<p>Confirms my theory that most companies are just bloat 80:20 rule.<p>Get rid of everyones whos not a nerd or directly sells product.
I wonder how much of this is the optics from the Riley Rojas types. That caused a real shit storm, and may have finally exposed upper mgmt to just how little most Meta employees do.<p>She's still employed there though. I can't imagine she'll ever be fired, too much legal risk.