can't help but remind me od Sinclair and the C5 ...

Yeah, "lay-offs because $pandemic" is just shorthand for "spaffed all the money betting that people would actually want the Metaverse".

There seems to be a definite trend amongst billionaires towards thinking that because they have been successful in the past, then anything they turn their hand to must therefore be successful in the future, if only they pump enough money into it.

If only we had an adage to describe this sort of hubris. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," springs to mind. Or "don't put all your eggs in one basket". Or indeed the fables of King Midas, or the Emperor's new Clothes...

If only there was precedent, eh? But of course there isn't, there's no such thing as a "cautionary tale," so nobody could possibly have known that trying to flog something that nobody wants wouldn't work...

Just Those who rise high, fall deep.

unless they get stuck in GEO or at one of the Lagrange points.

We-ell... we (i.e. us commentards here) would not touch the Metaverse with a long pole. But then we also have a bunch of linux fanboys / die-hard apple fanbois / the usual amount of Win11 critics and Win 7 holdouts. None of this reflects the reality (ok, except for Apple doing well) outside of this corner of ze intarwebs. Yeah, I wish the Metaverse would just keel over and take the rest of Facebook (oh, right, Meta) with it, but I am not sure if this really will happen. I might hope for it, but would not base any economic decision on that.

On the other claw, the average El Reg commentard is also an early adopter, spending a lot more time and money on unproven technology.

I'm pretty certain that far more commentards own or have tried VR systems than the general population.

Very likely.

I guess many of us remember the .... uh... incident with the flying... reproductive organs on Second Life, and are generally not interested in the whole "social" networks (apart from ElReg, I guess).

The old investment disclaimer comes to mind:

"Past results are no garantuee for the future"

> If only there was precedent, eh? But of course there isn't, there's no such thing as a "cautionary tale," so nobody could possibly have known that trying to flog something that nobody wants wouldn't work...

They haven't finished building it yet. And something this grand in scale requires _lots_ of investment. You need to put the money in to reap the benefits down the road, otherwise you might be calling them shortsighted.

The C5 was a brilliant idea, just pitched at exactly the wrong time. We now all agree traffic isn't fun, emissions aren't fun, driving a 5 seater car around to deliver one person to work isn't efficient, and that electric vehicles, especially small personal ones are perhaps the solution.

And while VR will cement it's place as a useful took eventually, a 'metaverse' is just makrketing hype. I'd rather have a C5 with modern batteries and brushless motors than a metaverse.

The C5 was a bad idea for the exact same reasons non-motorised recumbent bicycles are a bad idea: Being below the level of the window sills and wing mirrors of most vehicles is a recipe for being taken out by someone turning left. If you're using one to the right of traffic that might turn that way, you're as good as dead already, because most drivers won't even expect something to be on that side in their blind spot.

True but it doesn't have to be recumbent or so low, one-person electric mobility is a great idea.

Small electric vehicle for one person is an electric scooter or e-bike. If you want something a bit safer and not requiring the inconvenience of a helmet and when necessary, waterproof clothing, then something like a Renault Twizy. That's still not completely weatherproof but apparently it can also be 'winterized'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy

One of me mates has one. With doors and windows added. He is pretty happy with it. He has a short-ish commute without (good) public transport, some country road, some within city limits. The distance and speed limits completely fit the Twizzy's specs.

It is plain stupid that there is (here) no govmt subsidies for this type of vehicle. Let's say you get maybe 3k for it. This would almost cut the price in half (without windows, I guess). But no, it is "too small" and "not a proper car" - instead they subsidise f'ing electric SUVs which take a up a ton of space in already crammed city centres.

For me the Twizzy would not work, the commute is too long and over the highway. And in summer I prefer to bike (at least one way).

I totally agree. I've tried an e-bike on a hire scheme, and they're pretty good (the ones that were on trial here were really heavy though, I've ridden motorbikes that were lighter).

The problem with the electric scooters is one of lack of regulation. Or, more accurately, lack of enforcement of regulations. We have a "trial" e-scooter hire scheme here in Bristol and the results are, let's say, "mixed". If they're properly used, they're great, however, the operator clearly doesn't care about making sure they are used legally, and the police are far too under resourced to police them. The result is a free-for-all, where you see them misused in pretty much every way you can think of, and their existence has encouraged a lot of people to illegally ride privately owned ones with no insurance (because you can't insure them on the roads).

It's a real shame, because the shambolic way they have been introduced has led to most people hating them, as you have to dodge out of the way of morons riding them on pavements, and they're a real hazard to other traffic due to frequent multiple riders, drunk riders, children, people going the wrong way down one-way-streets, sailing through red lights, you name it. I'm genuinely surprised that nobody has been killed yet. Properly managed, they'd be a boon for commuters, but as it is, they don't get people out of their cars, they just stop people walking between pubs.

Got a chuckle from: "That's still not completely weatherproof..."

Never seen one, but the fact that it says "Renalt" on the tin gives me a pretty good idea...

OK, this is just a week or so after the Chief Twat announced his job cuts. Similar order of magnitude. Lots of arguments.

In this article about Meta, there are some signal phrases like "will respect local employment laws" etc. Not that Twitter will not do this, but His Muskiness is rather.... bad at communicating (on purpose?), leading to uproar - but then this creates publicity and visibility, attention he seems to strive for.

Interesting.

#justsayin'

"Zuck said the company will take into account local employment laws".

The fact that he actually needed to state that says a lot about their normal behaviour...

I do like it when an American corporation deigns to take into account the laws of other countries where they apply. So thoughtful.

"We're planning to act legally [this time]"

Wow, way to attain the bare minimum there Zuck.

To be fair, 16 weeks severance + 2 weeks per year of service is FAR more than statutorily required in most European countries (that would be considered 'socialist' in the US), let alone the US.

Well, these forums exploded with outrage when ElMusk announced the layoffs (because we just did not believe he would stick to employment laws). So, yes, one needs to mention it, apparently.

I think a large part of the explosion wasn't so much about the not believing he'd stick to employment laws, but the whole way it was done. As more details came out he's clearly got the firing in order with local laws, but as usual was a dick about how he did it.

Closing offices, ex-employee's reporting their machine was wiping before they had even received an email, waking up to find out you were fired because it happened while you were asleep, etc...

Zuk's announcement seems to show a level of empathy he's not known for, maybe he's been doing a Musk and having a smoke, or maybe Meta's PR team weren't fired and could put together a better worded announcement about the redundancies and package, highlighting they'd thought a bit first and not wanting to end up on global news broadcasts for being completely heartless dicks.

It's not good that any company needs to mention employee's will still have access to email to communicate after their remote machines are wiped, but after the way twitter handle things I expect most companies will now.

As already mentioned, the severance is above and beyond legal requirements, certainly here in the UK.

There is never a good way of announcing layoffs and in the run up to christmas with living costs spiralling nobody looks good for it, but there are ways of announcing and breaking the news which don't involve setting fire to everything you touch.

If he hadn't bothered with this idea, then the company would have made nearly $14 billion profits instead, and would have been able to identify and trim any superfluous extra hires with little drama. Logically, in any sensibly run company, it would make most sense to ditch the money torching metaverse crap instead, but that of course would be a global humiliation for Zuckerberg, especially as it was his big vision and he renamed the company after it. But the shareholders won't be able to force that because of his "magic shares" which means he retains control, rather than facing the correct consequences of being chucked out for his dumb gamble that most tech people saw straight away was never going to be successful.

The longer he carries on with it, the bigger the damage will be. At what point will he give up, before it crashes and burns completely?

"The longer he carries on with it, the bigger the damage will be. At what point will he give up, before it crashes and burns completely?"

Hopefully he'll carry on as long as possibly. Big bonfires burn better.

If Apple hadn't spent all that money on iPod and then iPhone it would have made $bn more profit in the years before iPhone launched.

Without metaverse Facebook is just the next AOL, it's where granny and a few conspiracy nuts hang out. Of course if everyone just goes with tiktok videos they are screwed anyway

Without metaverse Facebook is just the next AOL

And with it, it's the next Theranos. Have you seen any of this "Metaverse" stuff? It's shit.

Nothing wrong with investing in metaverse, it could've been a huge tech if the pandemic extended 2 more years. As it benefits WFH situations. Companies need to take on new tech by betting big. A decade ago, everybody here was laughing at home much money Tesla was burning to make an EV.

"Nothing wrong with investing in metaverse, it could've been a huge tech if the pandemic extended 2 more years."

Yep. All those people trying to do serious work from home needed nothing more than a face-cage to help them pretend they're hanging out with a cartoon version of Z-berg. It's the future!

face-cage. TY for the new term; I shall use it whenever I get the chance.

It may be unpopular everywhere, but I sort of respect that he willing to take the metaverse risk. FB is stale and there are tons of articles about how it is your parents/grandparents social network now. So he is willing to take a risk rather than sit and run a company that will slowly decline. Investors are just worried about quarterly earnings reports. See Google for what that does to a company.

It's incredibly arrogant of zuc not to take any blame for the screwing his employees over.

He's been called into multiple governments hearings for his data abuse, has at least admitted to some political manipulation, constant issues with falsely accusing people of disinformation when it often FB doing it as political favors.

He takes no blame himself for his behavior, what a zcumbag.

Without those abuses he would have lost even more.

Heard about the social media company that doesn't track any of its uses, provides no data to advertisers and allows others to influence the politicians? No because they never made it.

He should have done more. In return for pushing a certain president to the top of everyones feed he could have got tiktok banned, cos Jinna, and be in way better shape.

Heard about the social media company that doesn't track any of its uses, provides no data to advertisers and allows others to influence the politicians? No because they never made it.

Mastodon? Diaspora?

There is a reason Bezos stepped down when he did...

So 11,000 people did nothing wrong. And now they are going to be scrambling to put food on the table because one man's an idiot.

(Yes, that 11,000 no doubt includes people with marketable skills, possibly your mates, who will easily find another post. But they'll be plenty of low level peons. And nobody is hiring - only firing their own.)

So very nice of you to think that at least some of them will have marketable skills.

You don't have a lot of respect for the working class, do you?

If he hadn't been an idiot they wouldn't have been hired in the first place.

" I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that, "

I think the 11,000 who are losing their jobs are taking that particular responsibility.

Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too

Really?... just, really??

In what universe can "permanent acceleration"even be considered as a possibility?

It seems Meta is so blinded by its (past) success that even reality is disregarded if it doesn't match its ideas. Hopefully this is the first step towards its total downfall.

The comment about expecting Pandemic level growth to continue post pandemic was absolutely stupid. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain (so Gartner are probably out), that the spending levels would go up until people a) got used to living under pandemic conditions, or b) the pandemic passed (or reduced to levels where people could get back to relatively normal living, such as where we are now). In no world, did it ever make sense that they would keep growing. So I would expect the analysts who told Zuck that "Of course, it will continue. Brilliant boss!" should certainly be the first of those 11k out the door. But of course they wont be, Yes men (and women), never get the sack...

However, the second thought is that, if those reported conditions for the 11k unfortunates are true, then that's about the best ever payoff I have ever seen or heard of a US firm offering. So fair play, I have to give Meta some cred for that. They might actually be treating their departing employees with a modicium of respect and care. Who woulda thunk it?

I expect the Republican party to be a long any minute now calling zuck a Commie for such unamerican behaviour... :P

Do employees at Facebook spend all day tweeting and vice versa? Just interested...

11,000 - that is about 3 Twitter Emailed Layoffs !

He cut 'em off at the knees, which explains those legless avatars.