Sorry for all the people who’ve lost their jobs, but I’m excited to see the awesome world-changing stuff they’ll make now that they’re not spending their time building FB/Instagram.
I mean, the "world-changing" stuff they're investing in is what directly led to this layoff. The metaverse was the most heavily impacted by these layoffs.
Yeah, someone posting above literally said that their AR/VR teams were left pretty much unscathed. In fairness these teams might also be a lot smaller and more "optimised" in desired structure as they're younger than the rest of the company.
There were some contradictory signals about this in the article. In one bit Mark says they are continuing to focus on the metaverse but he also says some people at Reality labs will be affected. But it sounds like the apps teams are going to be affected too
I'm sure there are lots of competent people putting a lot of effort in "Metaverse", but to me it looks really just yet another VR world. Does anyone know what is the concrete new thing it would make successful?
I own an Oculus 2, I really love Half Life Alyx, I had a PC that works well for VR...
I have no idea if Metaverse is a game you download and run or it's supposed to be some tokens you take from game to game. I just have no idea. I've seen the creepy/shitty Zuck avatars, so I assume there is some chat-game involved somewhere.
Notice there are no questions in this post. I don't care to learn. Just re-stating how poor the messaging of what it is they apparently want me to care about is.
Just a name change for FB's parent company. Also zucc wanted to excite people with VR stuff but it is not even close to 5 years ago Recroom experience yet.
Smart people can also change the world by working on climate change, improving healthcare costs, addressing the energy crisis, coming up with new ways to mass manufacturer consumer goods at reasonable prices without shipping things halfway around the world and back, help an increasingly aging population do basic stuff.... the metaverse (maybe crypto?) were just natural evolutions of existing business models, but these weren't the world changing things people need, so capitalism (the brutal nature is why it works) didn't reward it.
If these smart people spend their brain energy to address these needs, which the world actually needs, they'll find success again, and the world will be changed in the way it needs to be... and frankly that's the way capitalism is supposed to work. Changing the world is only rewarded when people want it.
Lol way too hard given all the politics and gatekeepers in those fields. Doing software is so much easier than that right now.
And I disagree that solving climate change etc. is a "need" for most people. I think we all pretty much accept that climate change is going to happen unless some major coups or revolutions take place, and there's nothing we can do about it. Seems like the plan for the individual is just to ride it out for our 80 years, or until there's some food shortage or water crisis that kills us.
Do you think that great, world-changing, folks go to Facebook to sit on a big salary? if they were going to do something awesome they probably wouldn't have been working there.
now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be different
Getting laid off during a tech crash often leads to smart people deciding to finally follow the dreams they couldn't justify during the tech bull market. There's probably no shortage of people working at Facebook who have dreams of quitting to build some idea they have. But quitting a job paying 350k or whatever is just not in the cards.
To call Google an “advertising company” is disingenuous and I suspect you know that. Whilst Facebook has been obsessed with chasing eyeballs and advertising, Google has built Google maps, Gmail, Android, Translate, all kinds of search, GCP, the leading web browser, Chromebooks, self driving cars, the most advanced quantum computer, world leading AI research and a ton more.
> To call Google an “advertising company” is disingenuous
It probably depends on one’s perspective. Their Q3’22 financials show that $54b of their $69b revenue for the quarter is advertising income. It is also listed first in their financials.
Also, I can think of many people who would be building amazing things outside FAANG but choose to go to FAANG to pay off college debts or to build wealth i.e. they come from poverty. Let's not even get into biases in how capital is distributed. Like, there's a hierarchy of basic needs for a person and their family before they can turn down life changing compensation to 'build something cool!'.
I spent the first 10 years of my career paying off student debt. The last 5 have been catching up on the retirement savings I missed out on over the first 10 years. As long as I don't have a major medical event maybe I can turn down a job and "build something cool" when I'm 50.
FWIW I’m currently working on a startup side project with someone at Meta. I don’t know that we’re going to “change the world” but I think we’re both awesome and I can see us building something awesome.
We both have jobs because we need to pay our bills.
I think that many great, world-changing, folks have a non-linear life path and may end up doing all kinds of things including working for evil corporations for money, or bussing tables at Denny's before they get to the actual great, world-changing stuff.
> For the past 10+ years, in this forum, the advice is to stop trying to build something, go work at Faang
I think the advice given, when requested, has much more nuance that takes into account the context provided in the request. Do you honestly think HN is just a bunch of FAANG fanboys?
You may be thinking of the Google from 10+ years ago. I left all the way back in 2016 and the Alphabet transition had already turned it soulless. I've heard it certainly hasn't gotten better since.
I don't work at either, but aren't they both advertising companies with roughly same kinds of people working at them? Why do you think it would be different?
The one thing I want is the ability to work on my own startup in my spare time, without fearing legal repercussions. It wouldn't require me to risk my house on an idea.
FB still making 4Billion in profit, all the comments here dont seem to talk about that Twitter wasnt profitable, FB is and laid off 4x the amount of employees, Zuck just saw Musk do it and thought itd be a perfect time while the attention is on Musk and Twitter, that letter Zuck wrote is sick and sounds like its written by a sad emotionless robot he brags about how profitable Meta is in that letter its pathetic, reminds me of the 70s and Reagan and neoliberalism making changes to laws to allow capital flight from New York to the south and firing all the well paid factory workers in the Bronx 10,000 families now without a breadwinner over night Zuck blew through billions on his VR research that no ones buying and just saw the perfect opening to sharpen his technocrat knives and surgically remove 11,000 employees even though they all contributed to making Meta be 4B in profit and it was Zuck who blew billions he needs his stock to bounce back so he can continue buying the rest of Hawaii
