News: 0175268317

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Meta Is Laying Off Employees After 2023's 'Year of Efficiency' (theverge.com)

(Wednesday October 16, 2024 @11:30PM (BeauHD) from the latest-developments dept.)


According to The Verge, Meta has " [1]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 [2]joining the Threads team in 2023.

Meta [3]laid off 11,000 employees in 2022 and then [4]cut 10,000 more people as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's " [5]year of efficiency " in 2023.

Further reading: [6]Tech Layoffs Highest Since Dot-Com Crash



[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24272195/meta-layoffs-whatsapp-instagram-reality-labs

[2] https://www.threads.net/@wongmjane/post/CuVaOg1PgU4

[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/07/039252/meta-plans-thousands-more-layoffs-as-soon-as-this-week

[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/03/14/140232/meta-to-cut-another-10000-jobs-and-cancel-low-priority-projects

[5] https://about.fb.com/news/2023/03/mark-zuckerberg-meta-year-of-efficiency/

[6] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/03/15/2340257/tech-layoffs-highest-since-dot-com-crash



DonNull (Score:1)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

Trump hasn't explained his "really terrific plan". Tariffs are not an econ booster.

Re: (Score:2)

by jhoegl ( 638955 )

Concept of a plan.

Re: (Score:2)

by phantomfive ( 622387 )

Doesn't really matter. Swing states are sliding towards Trump, and Harris hasn't been able to come up with an answer to "saving cats from being eaten."

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: (Score:1)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

> Harris hasn't been able to come up with an answer to "saving cats from being eaten."

Yes she has: waking up from one's Fox-induced coma.

Hold on, Tex (Score:5, Insightful)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

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.

Re: (Score:2)

by jhoegl ( 638955 )

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 h

Re: (Score:2)

by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 )

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

Been hearing this talking point from Russia lately (Score:2)

by rsilvergun ( 571051 )

Even the Republican party finds it silly. It is definitionally not a recession let alone a depression.

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

Re: (Score:2)

by phantomfive ( 622387 )

> 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:2)

by tiqui ( 1024021 )

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

Re: (Score:2)

by jbengt ( 874751 )

replying to undo wrong moderation

Re: (Score:1)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

You blame your anal warts on Biden.

The layoffs will continue (Score:2)

by hwstar ( 35834 )

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

Honestly they'll continue until interest rates com (Score:2)

by rsilvergun ( 571051 )

Which will force Facebook to start competing with startups again causing another hiring blitz. That's why they over hired. They were hiring up all the engineers so that potential competitors wouldn't have any or would have to pay through the nose to get them and burn through their startup capital quicker making them good targets for a buyout.

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: (Score:3)

by phantomfive ( 622387 )

If they aren't firing managers first, then they aren't becoming more efficient.

Meta, fire them all! (Score:2)

by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )

Problem solved.

The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his decision
to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."