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garbawarb 1 days ago [-]
Do a search for "Meta" in HN and their 2022 layoffs of 11000 people is one of the most-voted posts with over two thousand upvotes. Now in 2026 it barely registers as news.
10xDev 1 days ago [-]
Because it hasn't happened yet.
golfer 1 days ago [-]
A company in incredible turmoil. Would not want to be there now. Morale must be brutal.
FartyMcFarter 1 days ago [-]
Almost everyone says turmoil and bad morale is the default at Meta. The default is lots of turf-protection, project stealing, and backstabbing. It will probably get worse with these news coming out.
Recently I've also heard of teams having very little amount of time to prove themselves before they get reorg'ed - which might be one of the reasons that their progress on AI has been slow.
The only person I know that is happy at Meta is someone who works at one of the acquisitions. That specific acquisition doesn't seem to have been infected by Meta's culture too much for now.
I just hope other CEOs don't see this and get antsy about following suit.
glaslong 21 hours ago [-]
It was always rough, but this is by far the worst I've ever seen or heard. The thrash and org maneuvering are feral.
htrp 2 days ago [-]
>Meta's planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism that it provided misleading results on the benchmarks it used for early versions. It abandoned the release of the largest version of that model, called Behemoth, which had been due out in the summer.
>The superintelligence team has been working to reassert the company's standing this year by building a new model called Avocado, but the performance of that model has also lagged expectations.
20% headcount reductions in return for a 600bn capex outlay to train that next gen base model
curiousllama 1 days ago [-]
This... can't be a signal of strength. There's a fine line between being agile and being erratic.
AI investment makes total sense as a proximal explanation. Minimize debt by trimming OpEx, then reinvest in compute. Seems smart.
And yet - this is what, the third layoff in 5 years? And weren't they doing aggressive performance cuts too? Are they workforce planning in 12 week sprints or something?
This reminds me of an overspending sports team: just toss together overpriced players/coaches, underperform, fire them all, do it again.
softwaredoug 24 hours ago [-]
Are we really just seeing the AI market sort itself out? We have leaders [OpenAI, Anthropic, Google]. Secondary players [xAI, Meta] once looked promising, now sort to the back.
We don't need half a dozen frontier labs. They're capital intensive.
And since neither Metas AI / metaverse investments worked out, they're back to the same business they've always had: social media. Which is an OK enough business, but not high growth.
thunky 18 hours ago [-]
> they're back to the same business they've always had: social media. Which is an OK enough business, but not high growth.
Amazing that Meta is even mentioned in the same breath as Google considering the ocean sized difference in what they do and the services they offer.
I know the reason is market cap. But that's the amazing part. That a company as limp and unimpressive as Meta could have over a trillion dollars in market cap.
OrangeDelonge 9 hours ago [-]
They are quite similar in the sense that both generate most of their revenue through ads.
thunky 2 hours ago [-]
Right but Google has loads of market leading services they use to deliver those ads, and Facebook has a crappy dated website and dumb ideas that lose them money which they brand the company on.
I know I'm simplifying, but not by much imo.
Marsymars 16 hours ago [-]
They have pretty similar P/E (currently Meta a bit better).
Watching ads on facebook/instagram is addictive/profitable.
thunky 12 hours ago [-]
> They have pretty similar P/E
That's the baffling part. I would think YouTube alone would crush Facebook in profitability. Then add all the other things Google does and it's not even close.
I understand the reality, but I don't get it.
treis 1 days ago [-]
This will get them back to pre-covid levels.
FartyMcFarter 1 days ago [-]
79k * 0.8 = 63.2k
At the end of 2019 they had 45k employees.
It's more accurate to say that this will get them to late 2023 levels which was 67k employees:
Meta is close to achieving "AGI" internally (layoffs).
heresie-dabord 21 hours ago [-]
> achieving "AGI" internally
There comes an uncanny point where a Corporation's beleaguered flailing is indistinguishable from Actualised General Incompetence.
natpalmer1776 20 hours ago [-]
This is fantastic. It does beg the question for me of how much incompetence is acceptable from a purported (traditional) AGI system before it no longer qualifies as such. After all, the competence of humans varies wildly.
tren_hard 18 hours ago [-]
On the last earnings call Zuck empathized how much revenue is being allocated to salaries and RSUs. I take those types of comments during earnings calls to be signals to investors that cuts will be coming to bring expenses down by the next quarter. How many rounds between earnings is speculation, but you know at at least one big one.
A friend who works in a growing division within Meta also said last week they are re-orging again.. this time flattening out everything and making first level SDMs go back to IC. It’s always been a cut throat final-stage capitalism place to work. Nothing they do should be surprising.
Recently I've also heard of teams having very little amount of time to prove themselves before they get reorg'ed - which might be one of the reasons that their progress on AI has been slow.
The only person I know that is happy at Meta is someone who works at one of the acquisitions. That specific acquisition doesn't seem to have been infected by Meta's culture too much for now.
I just hope other CEOs don't see this and get antsy about following suit.
>The superintelligence team has been working to reassert the company's standing this year by building a new model called Avocado, but the performance of that model has also lagged expectations.
20% headcount reductions in return for a 600bn capex outlay to train that next gen base model
AI investment makes total sense as a proximal explanation. Minimize debt by trimming OpEx, then reinvest in compute. Seems smart.
And yet - this is what, the third layoff in 5 years? And weren't they doing aggressive performance cuts too? Are they workforce planning in 12 week sprints or something?
This reminds me of an overspending sports team: just toss together overpriced players/coaches, underperform, fire them all, do it again.
We don't need half a dozen frontier labs. They're capital intensive.
And since neither Metas AI / metaverse investments worked out, they're back to the same business they've always had: social media. Which is an OK enough business, but not high growth.
Amazing that Meta is even mentioned in the same breath as Google considering the ocean sized difference in what they do and the services they offer.
I know the reason is market cap. But that's the amazing part. That a company as limp and unimpressive as Meta could have over a trillion dollars in market cap.
I know I'm simplifying, but not by much imo.
Watching ads on facebook/instagram is addictive/profitable.
That's the baffling part. I would think YouTube alone would crush Facebook in profitability. Then add all the other things Google does and it's not even close.
I understand the reality, but I don't get it.
At the end of 2019 they had 45k employees.
It's more accurate to say that this will get them to late 2023 levels which was 67k employees:
https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/meta/employees/
There comes an uncanny point where a Corporation's beleaguered flailing is indistinguishable from Actualised General Incompetence.
A friend who works in a growing division within Meta also said last week they are re-orging again.. this time flattening out everything and making first level SDMs go back to IC. It’s always been a cut throat final-stage capitalism place to work. Nothing they do should be surprising.