Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

booleandilemma

Programmers only or across the company?

reconnecting

Given the same trend at Oracle and Amazon (1), it seems large corporations are cutting costs ahead of bad news... and that news isn't about AI.

Ancalagon

Re: > If America’s so rich how’d it get so sad > https://www.derekthompson.org/p/if-americas-so-rich-howd-it-...

rvz

Is this what they mean to "Feel the AGI?" AGI has been achieved internally once again at Meta.

josefritzishere

It's like the economy is struggling or something.

prism56

Wonder if there is a self fulfilling prophecy. These large "AI" companies push their models/platforms for increasing productivity. If they're not reducing their own workforce or increasing productivity and reaching larger growth and profits, why would the rest of the world believe them and do the same.

dwa3592

Would it be Mark's cloned AI who will call everyone 'personally' to share this news? I won't be surprised if that's one of the use cases in their mind.

shmatt

if you've ever been through a Meta loop (and their method is to cast an extremely wide net, so chances are you have), you've seen how inefficient their loop can be for long term success 6-7 38* minute interviews, while the interviewee is trying to squeeze in showcasing their skills and experience, the interviewer is obsessed with figuring out a rigid set of pre-determined "signals" Once these candidates actually start work, their success in the team is a complete coinflip * 38 minutes = 45 minute scheduled - 2 minute intro - 5 minute saved for candidate questions at the end

geremiiah

The only part of Meta I care about is the PyTorch team. Are those people also being affected by this?

trjordan

It's an honest surprise that this isn't spun as "internal AI efficiency gains." They want the efficiency, of course there's AI component, but they're not pre-claiming victory. Neat. It's worth remembering that there's an _actual_ underlying economic problem here. Interest rates are up. AI spending is expensive. A dollar invested in a company needs to do _more_ than it did 5 years ago, relative to sitting in treasury bills. And Meta isn't delivering on that right now. But IMHO: that's no excuse. This is admitting defeat, deciding to push the share price higher while they give up. Meta has the user data, the AI ambitions, the distribution, and the brand. They could do anything, and the world is re-inventing itself. They're ... laying off people, maximizing profits, and giving up. Cowards.

chis

I'd guess AI has made the average SWE around twice as productive at this point. This is a sort of efficiency shock, where companies suddenly need to find twice as much productive work to do or start firing employees. FB probably had a bunch of slack to absorb this but ultimately it's just hard to find that much work all at once. I predict that tech companies will hire back a lot of this lost headcount over time. Although AI will keep getting better, so there's more downward pressure coming. Facebook, Amazon, and Google have had flat headcount since 2022, and this layoff will reduce FB's size back to 2021 levels.

rishabhaiover

I have a genuine dislike for all Meta products now. With time, their intentions have become much more clear and it was never to bring people closer or whatever.

jonnonz

What happened to the metaverse ?I suspect maybe wasting all the resource wasn’t a good idea

jonatron

I find the scale of some companies hard to understand, they're laying off multiples of the total number of employees of the largest company I've worked at.

janalsncm

I remember in 2022 people still said things like “there hasn’t been a major tech layoff in 20 years”. Those days are a distant memory. This Meta layoff is lost in the noise of tons of other ones by this point.

gip

I have been told by a startup founder that he wants his strongest player to replace and automate the weakest using AI! That may be what Meta is already doing. I’m afraid we are going to see something like that at play in tech for the coming few years until we get to an equilibrium. Sad and it might work.

whatever1

Let me guess. Year of efficiency?

HardCodedBias

Everyone at Meta should know the score. Meta pays top dollar. They also pay enormous sums for what management identifies as performance. Conversely, Meta is ruthless about cutting those management identifies as low performers. This is the deal going in. It’s not a crime.

cchrist

This isn't surprising. This will happen at every tech company first, then every other company afterwards. All jobs will get automated, then all companies will be ran by one person: their owner.

dsign

I wouldn't make much of it; the economy looks a bit iffy right now due to the surge in energy prices and difficulties sourcing inputs. This affects mainly industrial enterprises, shipping and transport but those are no small sectors and anything that affects them ripples through the rest of the global economy. Where I live (Northern Europe), not only are those sectors already sacking people, but the banks are rising interest rates well ahead of an expected wave of inflation. This affects both consumer and industrial loans, and it means that many economies are going to continue in contraction or that things may get worse.