Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring | Hacker News Reader

Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring

bloomberg.com

505 pointsminimaxir521 comments

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg said. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.

The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no dividend be valued accordingly.

> ... Meta had more than 83,500 employees as of June 30, and added 5,700 new hires in the second quarter. ...

FWIW, 28 % annualized hiring growth for a company the size and age of Meta is not normal. It's a sign of mismanagement and especially loss of focus.

And they don't even create (and then quickly retire) random new product. Do they? What would be Meta's equivalent of Stadia?

Oculus

Oculus is a much bigger investment than Stadia

And Facebook didn't create it either

Nor did they retire it, they rebranded it.

IGTV

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/5/22710638/instagram-tv-igt...

> It's a sign of mismanagement and especially loss of focus.

I think it's a natural symptom of running a company built on exploiting people's desire to craft and control their own image. It's corporate narcissism. Zuckerberg has been invincible for so long, how could he not be consumed by the reality distortion field himself?

Ooh, careful saying anything negative about social media or tech companies here. /s

That's one of the easiest way to get upvoted here, especially wrt Meta.

> The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years.

You might enjoy reading "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail", https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-... (The author is Ray Dalio, one of the US's best institutional investors.)

The big question is, when are we going to hit bottom? We need to make it through the Ukraine and Taiwan situations before things really bounce back.

> and Taiwan situations

Let's hope we don't get a Taiwan situation on top of all of the other stuff that's going on. That way lies WWIII.

I expect that's the real reason for the US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine: signalling to China about Taiwan.

Because pursuing a similar strategy with China would be substantially more expensive, in terms of treasure and blood, for both sides.

But the critical date there seems to be 2030-2035 based on military preparations.

Absolutely. The entire thing is absolutely about China. Russia is a broken country that would have no significance beyond its hydrocarbons and nukes. China is an economic superpower and growing world power. Very soon it could replace the US as the primary driver of globalism. If the west had shown itself as disunited, it would have been time for China to take center stage in world affairs for the next hundred years. Instead it will wait for another generation.

China doesn't have another generation. They'll be going into a very stark population collapse that's worse than what Japan is experiencing now, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers. I expect that China's economy and influence will take the shape of an upside-down U, with the peak in the next decade. If they're going to move on Taiwan, they cannot wait forever. They came close to catching up the US, but I don't think they will achieve it.

Is there any other country that ever showed anything other then upside-down U in terms of economy strength and influence. To best of my knowledge every country, empire or society rises and eventually falls. Probably the best known example is Roman empire but every other society I can think of exhibits same pattern.

Recorded history is only a few thousand years, and things changed significantly, especially in the modern era.

Don't be so sure that everything follows the patterns of the past.

But, we best not remain complacent.

Hah, good point! In the case of China they're likely to peak soon. The USA might peak much later still. The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years. I have my doubts the US can go the distance, but let's see.

> The Roman empire lasted over 1000 years.

Treating all the things that were called "The Roman Empire" as one thing is a pretty big stretch. Modern nations have much more rigid and well-defined natures.

There's a big difference between "eventually country X will fall," and "country X will start to decline in the next decade."

That's one of the core points of https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-...

China has multiple generations. Even "stark" demographic collapse at PRC scale is generating millions of new births per year (several times greater than US even with immigration), there will never be shortage of bodies to fill the military, especially increasingly small force structure of modern militaries that's shifting towards autonomous platforms. As for economy, expect PRC to continue growing, more importantly, move up tech/value chain and build comprehensive national power, just like Japan did while her demographic was absolutely in the shits because JP managed to massively improve human capita via education to create the skilled workers for high value economy (also SKR, TW). For reference PRC is now outputting as much STEM talent as all OECD combined.

Like other the Asian Tigers with death spiral demographics still grew significantly simply because cohort of skilled workers increased massively even though demographics broadly declined. There's a reason PRC is rapidly moving up science and innovation indexes (controlled for quality, not just citations). The reality is, PRC demographics has never been MORE competitive, and will increasingly be, because advanced economic development phase is just getting started. Quantity of quality is in human capital is increasing at stupendous pace. Now add in PRC is adopting as much industrial robots / automation than the next 15 countries combined and that overall demographic decline (as in net population decline) only improves PRC strategic position by reducing import dependence. And that the massive regional income disparity + huge home ownership + enviable house hold savings rate = PRC elderly simply don't have significant expection (or need) for old age social support. In many ways, PRC is almost optimized for weathering demographic bomb with less social cost relative to properly developed countries that are seeing comparable demographic decline.

Japan's economy has been stagnant for the last thirty years[1]. China can look forward to worse by all indications so far. Upskilling their labor force won't fix that. It didn't save Japan.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/gdp-growth-r...

>labor force won't fix

Not for JP because their skillforce potential was already relatively maxed out, their education reform paid off late in 70s while domestic politics squandered female labour participation. JP stagnanted after it tapped out demographic divident of educated/skilled work force in 80s - JP didn't have enough people / demand to upgrade what she had left to push further. Ultimately she settled in fairly prosperous status quo, but as medium sized country, also did not have sufficient internal market or requisite talent to compete across every sector.

VS PRC's recent skilled demographic explosion form 00s academic / S&T / R&D reforms that have not been fully exploited, which is the critical cohort that will build national strength. PRC has internal markets and talent pool to compete in every sector and will move up value chain accordingly. Ultimately just due to sheer amount of people, huge % of whom are lost cause, PRC will settle somewhere below JP, but still significantly higher than where it is now, likely much than US in gross/real ppp terms. Another important dynamic is PRC moving up value chain across all sectors will chip away at western economic primacy. PRC's skills driven growth trend will be slower relative to historic performance of other Tigers because even world demand was not enough to uplift 1.4B people. But that slower growth will start to directly challenge / eat lunch in sectors wealthy west dominantes. PRC may grow slow, but it merely growing will ensure west grows SLOWER if not regress.

One should expect PRC economy to grow slower and stagnate in 20-30 years, but will pull head of US, substantively in real GDP / PPP terms. All while moving up the up value chain, increasing comprehensive national power, and simulatenously erode western economies growth potential. Antcipate a future where every $1 growth in PRC hightech exports takes away 2% from west. Expect PRC industrial/trade policy sell at -$1 loss to cost west $4. JP as US vassel post war did not have the political freedom to play that game, it got Plaza'ed instead.

I read Japan's lack of growth as directly stemming from their cultural conservatism. I believe they're among the countries with the lowest immigration and least ethnic foreigners living there?

It's hard to engage economically with a diverse world when your available viewpoints are less diverse. At some point you reach a ceiling.

China has run through the Japanese hypergrowth years (leverage wage disparity, then move up value chain by producing copies of higher value items) and is now in the R&D phase. We'll see how it goes from here.

>They'll be going into a very stark population collapse that's worse than what Japan is experiencing now, where adult diapers outsell baby diapers.

As opposed to most of Europe ...

Also, the quality of your human capital is more important than just having a large unsustainable population growth without much marketable skills or know-how on the international scale. Otherwise parts of Africa and Asia would be economic super powers by now.

Europe doesn't have a population collapse. They make up the difference with immigration, as does Canada and the US. Japan and China do not.

Most immigration to Europe is incredibly low-bar unskilled economic chancers interested in exploiting the welfare state, not skilled workers, doctors and engineers like you get in US and Canada which have stricter immigration policies.

That is patently false. Especially the Western and Northern EU countries have a massive influx of high-skill workers (doctors, programmers, engineers) from both Eastern EU countries (which will dry up sooner rather than later, to be fair, with terrible population growth already happening for more than a decade in places like Romania), but also from neighboring countries - Turkey being the largest source.

Even the so hated "refugee crisis" from Syria saw mostly middle-class Syrians moving to Europe (putting it in fear quotes since the whole of the EU had fewer refugees than Turkey alone to accept).

>Especially the Western and Northern EU countries have a massive influx of high-skill workers (doctors, programmers, engineers) from both Eastern EU countries

That's mostly false. I haven't met a single programmer from Romania in Austria or any dev from turkey who wishes to emigrate here. Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands. Having an open borders immigration policy is discouraging for those with skills who can afford to shop around for the better option vs economic refugees who shop around for the country with the most welfare.

If I look at the immigration statistics here, most immigrants are refugees from Africa, Middle East, and East Asia, not doctors and engineers with visas, those are only a tiny minority of the total immigration.

You may not have met them, and Austria may not be very attractive for this type of immigration, but there are significant populations of them. Remember that BioNTech (who created the European Corona vaccine) was in fact founded and is operated by Turkish immigrants to Germany.

> Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands.

The Netherlands at least is still part of the EU. You'll also find plenty of high-skilled migrants in Ireland as well, and France and Germany also attract quite a few.

Note that language concerns and attitudes towards foreigners, especially foreign workers, are a huge part of how many people come to work in a particular country. Ireland and the UK have a huge advantage here purely by virtue of speaking English, as does France for the populations in North Africa. The Netherlands are very open to using English in business, even though their own language is quite obscure. German is less internationally spoke than English or French, but it is not that obscure either.

I am generally in favour of tightening migration laws in general around Europe, but even I can admit that this isn't accurate. Many European countries are wonderful places to live and raise families. Canada and the U.S. absolutely compete with the U.K., Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and even France and Germany, on skilled workers. The U.S. offers the best wages, and people motivated primarily by wages will try the U.S. first. But there are lots of people who either don't make the H1B cut, don't want to be beholden to political whims during the arduous trek to citizenship (which can take a decade or more, with multiple gates), or (and this one is a big one), are turned off by U.S. education, violence, crime, health outcomes, lack of social safety nets, and politics.

All that said, Europe is going to have to become much tougher on refugees in the coming decades. I foresee a re-negotiation of the various refugee conventions written at a very different time in history.

Why isn't this accurate? I never said Europe is not a great place. I said that the statistical majority of immigrants moving here are mostly low skilled refugees in the tens of thousands a month, rather than the much needed doctors, nurses, teachers and various workers and engineers wich are very few of the total immigration population.

While that may be true today, that's where future doctors, nurses, teachers, and various workers and engineers come from.

Young people + a functioning and accessible education system is what produces highly skilled workers.

In an ideal world maybe. In the real word, what you hope for was definitely not the result of Europe's uncontrolled immigration policies. If you want future doctors, nurses, etc, you need to to select for those through a points based immigration system like the US, Canada, Australia, etc. are doing instead of letting all the chancers in who are willing to pay smugglers and cheat the asylum system and hope they'll then want to play by the rules and become doctors and nurses.

Last week I saw a report with Middle Eastern migrants stuck in Serbia wanting to cross into the EU (Germany and Austria specifically). They interviewed one migrant from Iraq with his wife and five small kids, let's call him "Bob", and the reporter asked Bob why he's trying to get to the EU. He said it's because there's no future in Iraq. Well Bob, let me ask you this, if you knew there's no future in Iraq, why did you decided to have five kids then? Surely if you live in poverty, then birth control is a better idea no? Or oral/anal/pulling out, if that's not available. But instead, the EU(German/Austrian) taxpayer will have to pay to house a man with no knowledge of birth control or sense of personal responsibility, who's only professional skill is busting nuts, and his numerous family.

A mixed-race friend of mine volunteers in a refugee center here since he speaks several languages and he's pissed that migrants just laugh at us, saying "Europeans are so stupid they pay us for everything then give us more money which we just send back home".

This kind of immigration does not breed the results you're hoping for since it mostly encourages the ones willing to cheat to get free stuff rather that to contribute to the host nation.

The rich countries with restrictive immigration policies and high barrier of entry (US, Canada, Australia, New-Zeeland, Switzerland), attract the highly skilled and most productive immigrants that will add the most amount of value back into the economy. EU mostly attracts welfare shoppers.

You seem very angry about welfare and immigration of people without skills. We have very different opinions about what makes a country strong.

I'd point out that in all your replies in this subtree, you're essentially making the same point.

And if you're making the same point, you're not really thinking about what you're replying to: you could be replying to a wall for all intents and purposes.

In my city we have medical students coming to study from all over Asia and Africa. They will become doctors, surgeons and other specialists. Many will use this as a stepping stone to stay in the EU. What you said is flat out false.

I know that, I know some of them myself, but I never said that no doctors from outside the EU ever immigrate here. What was your point?

And how big is the % of medical professionals or medical students among all the total (legal and illegal) immigration into the EU? 0,000001%?

The more important stat is what the distirbution of immigrants vs natives working as doctors or nurses in the EU is compared to the distribution of migrants vs natives in the total population. I believe you will see that migrants are generally over-represented in Healthcare compared to their percentage of the total population, and similarly in certain other industries.

I have not been able to find very recent data, but here is a paper from 2007 [0], showing that the percentage of physicians working in the country at that time who were migrants either from inside or outside Europe was well over 5%, with significant outliers such as the UK (30%), Ireland (30%), Norway (15%). In Austria it was 5%, though most migrants were from other rich EU countries.

[0] https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...

Immigration is incredibly key to this. There are a number of nations where young people outstrip elderly populations and allowing the flow of people and labor is crucial, as is their enablement/assimilation/integration so that they stay

Except immigration to Europe is mostly unskilled workforce that doesn't assimilate very successfully.

Also, the cost of housing in Europe is increasing so much that all those young people don't see a bright future ahead without help from the bank of mom and dad.

That may very well be the intent, but it seems to be backfiring. Go look at this very recent German Marshal Fund survey polling atlanticist countries with section on PRC invasion of TW.

https://www.gmfus.org/news/transatlantic-trends-2022

TLDR: negligible (average 4%) consider sending arms and even less (average 2%) consider sending troops. As if delivering either is possible to an island within overwhelming PRC military advantage. US highest at 8%, which is hilariously low given White House deterrence efforts. 32% considers joint sanctions. 35% only diplomatic efforts to end conflict. 12% do nothing. PRC is looking at these numbers and rubbing hands with glee.

Also consider UKR/RU conflict is already putting EU competitiveness into the shits with trend likely to continue. Pre-war PRC was worried about EU acting as potential spoiler via US coordination, but now EU is so weak that they're even more geopolitically irrelevant. Meanwhile PRC gets dependable energy partner in RU and increased influence in central Asia / MENA / global south who sees the hypocrisy in western response when a western country is attacked. India is even more reticent about militarizing QUAD. JP economy is going to shits, even if they wanted to increase military spending, they likely can not afford to.

Also notice youth are substantially less PRC. In 2030+ time frame, we're like to going to see extremely war wearing societies with polity shifting less anti-PRC at all cost, digging out of economic cesspit who will have even less appetite to sanction a much larger trading partner like PRC. These signalling are having less and less impact coming as EU weakens. As for US, PRC factored in US intervention in TW scenario anyway. It's not deterred but building up massive nuclear arsenal to follow RU's nuclear coercion strategy.

> US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine

If you look past their big talks of outrage in news media and critically asses the actual amount of military equipment given to Ukraine, you will see that it is nowhere close to any kind of "all-in", hardline or not. They are still refusing to provide even modern main battle tanks FFS.

They wouldn't receive offensive arms, until they did. They wouldn't receive HIMARS, until they did. They wouldn't receive fighter aircraft, until they did.

The only red lines on material escalation seem to be around ATACMS.

I'd expect MBTs and A-10s by next spring, with training over winter.

So you are saying that they are not even close to being all-in but may still do it some time in the future? Okay then.

Escalation is a process, not a single act.

It already looks like we are heading into ww3 with the destruction of NS pipes...

Seconding this, I’m reading the book at the moment and it’s an exceptional insight into the near and long term future. It’s also terrifying.

A little dated [2018], but still rings true: The average tenure for engineers at many major tech companies is ~3 years. Thus, you'd expect new hires at a rate of 30% annually just to maintain staffing levels. To determine headcount growth you, should look at year-over-year changes in total employee count, not just the number of new hires. TLDR: Meta's new-hire rate is not atypical.

https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-rete...

In fact, the overall head count has been rising rapidly.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...

Based on my limited observations having been in a similar situation for a year, I would guess the average tenure is Equity Award Years less percentage of people who get fired in less than the value of Equity Award Years.

It’s a good way to keep reinventing wheels.

3 years is deceptive - in an exponentially growing company, the majority of employees are fresh, pushing the average tenure low. The relevant number is "length of tenure at time of severance", which I believe skews much higher. Any company seeing 30% churn is having a bad, bad time.

“Length of tenure at time of severance”

That is such a better metric, why is this not used more often

It has its own almost-opposite problem in only counting employees who did leave.

Well you can also just count current employees' tenure. That fixes the problem and is qualitatively consistent IMO.

That’s how you get 3 years because everyone is new.

You're right - my mistake.

Then you get into the field of survival analysis, where you get methods that can handle this problem (called right censoring IIRC).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaplan%E2%80%93Meier_estimat...

Exactly. If half your workforce is happy and has been there 20 years, that’s entirely non reflected in such a figure. There must be a better metric.

I thinkit is impossible to get this number

What do you mean? Every employer I've worked for had data for the starting date of their employees, when someone leaves you have an end date of employment. It's a pretty simple metric to calculate.

I think by "this number" they mean "a better metric", maybe?

And this 3 years is kept up artificially - companes like Meta or, as a colleague of mine who works there now, Github / Microsoft, offer stock packages that they can only use after four years. It's a pair of golden handcuffs; they would move on a lot faster I'm sure if it wasn't for that + the wages offered.

Having Microsoft or Google or Meta on your CV is a very valuable thing to have, regardless of what you actually did there, because they're still perceived as having high standards.

>*The economy is stabilizing.*

The economy is never "stable". It is constantly in a cycle of ups and downs, over-investment and under-investment, easy money and tight money...

The current state is no more "normal" than any other period.

Zero is a special value you know, since zero times anything is zero.

Edit: Except infinity ...

In the limit 0*x tends to zero as x tends to infinity.

An infinite amount of nothing is still nothing.

According to my limited understanding it is NaN.

The economy most definitely experiences stability when people and business are able to have a reasonable amount of confidence that things don't hit the fan at any second now. This stability allows people to invest with more freedom, take more risk, and grow at a stable rate.

Of course this behavior eventually overheats...but in terms of expectations there is definitely a stable state to an economy, even if it only last a few years.

>The economy is never "stable". It is constantly in a cycle of ups and downs, over-investment and under-investment, easy money and tight money...

That's pedantic and beside the point. The question is whether the economy experiences periods of relative stability. The answer is yes.

What's the difference between stability and growth? If the economy isn't growing, people consider it "stagnant". Shrinking is "a recession".

> The economy is stabilizing.

The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed tightening since at least the 1980s.

If you know where that will end up, congrats. For the rest of us, it's very much uncharted waters.

Yeah and if he does know please share that with everyone else (people ok with terrifying news at least).

We are not stabilizing. There are serious supply issues, staffing issues, wild currency fluctuations, and fear -- including of nuclear conflict.

I am not sure in what world this is stabilization. It is easy to hit on the "mule" i.e. the average Joe and say "I gave you too much money, that you never saw, thus why Yada Yada, so learn not to eat and that will work fine." This is the naive explanation offered to the public masses to make them feel bad and that they deserve the recession. Aka anything to avoid political suicide. Other countries don't go out saying this fyi-- because e.g. they have a freaking war in the doorsteps during a pandemic and can't produce goods, because no natural gas. Because of sabotage.

Only stabilization is to the bottom.

> Only stabilization is to the bottom.

If that's where the economy should be (I don't know), then moving towards it is stabilizing, no?

That's what I'm hearing; we didn't dodge a recession it just hasn't started yet.

In TX energy prices are already up a lot this year. We generate a substantial percentage of electricity from natural gas, and exports are up for obvious reasons.

Winter is coming.

Thanks to the shale boom natural gas has been effectively free in the US (as a byproduct of shale oil production) for the last few years. For various reasons the boom has reverted to the mean (although shale is still very much around), and as a result natural gas in the US has gone from "free" to "not free". Prices will go up, but we'll be fine. We still literally have more gas than we know what to do with.

It's the Europeans and East Asians who are being royally screwed by gas prices at the moment, and that pressure isn't likely to cease anytime soon, particularly with the destruction of Nordstream.

I'm not sure historical natural gas prices support this idea of "free". Would need to crunch the numbers but at a glance the price came down about 50% in the 2010s from the aughts. It's had a few big, temporary dips most recently during the start of the pandemic in 2020.

It certainly wasn't "free" in Feb 2021. We have about a 3% hike on our bills now to pay down the record profits gas producers received.

My bill last cycle was 20% higher than last year with near identical usage. UK has already seen incredible energy cost increases. European winter is going to drive energy prices even higher.

Yeah, "we" will be fine because computers. But lower income families are getting hit hard with this and inflation.

Even still there is the Applebee's effect; people with money are paying more attention to those commercials because a lunch for two is pushing past 50$ dollars these days! That's gonna dry up investment even more. In the UK Liz Truss comes in and immediately commits political suicide with these tax cuts. Putting aside critiques aimed at trickle down economics, the timing is TERRIBLE. Startups are laying off because investment is drying up; tax cuts on high earners are going into savings and low-risk market investments.

All this combined is, IMHO, going to lead to a massive global recession.

"Free" in the sense of free extraction. Obviously you still need to pay for distribution, but the shale fields to this day are flaring off natural gas that they otherwise have no way to sell. That 50% drop in the 2010s is the shale boom.

Now that shale has calmed down and global demand has spiked, there's now a cost for the actual natural gas itself. A doubling of prices may seem like a lot, but historically the price is still well below average. Much like we've gotten used to free money over the last ten years, we've also gotten used to free gas.

That's not to say it isn't a problem, but we aren't in danger of running out of gas or any runaway price spikes.

> The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed tightening since at least the 1980s.

But the 2010s through 2020s period is a myth, a figment of cheap money. This money was made cheap to help us get out of the 2007/2008 recession, but the cheap money clearly went on too long.

Its warped all of our thinking. We should have been raising rates and paying down the Fed's balance sheet a long, long time ago. To be fair, we began the process in 2019, but COVID19 wrecked us in 2020.

Now its 2022 and inflation is growing out of control. We have no choice but to raise rates now.

Plus we pretty much lowered rates to 0. Europe's experimentation with negative interest rates yielded... well it's debatable whether it yielded anything of substance (pun intended).

So there's pretty much nowhere else to go, and if we want to have the option to lowering rates to combat future crises... well it looks like we'll have to pay for the option.

Human complacency never ceases to fuck things up. Those who seriously plan ahead are a minority, and don't control the ballot box.

“ Those who seriously plan ahead are a minority, and don't control the ballot box.”

Sadly true.

And sometimes this reduces the benefits of planning ahead.

If the fed money printer will bail is out every time then it makes financial sense to splurge.

On the contrary. We're not complacent. The Fed is raising rates, like it should be.

Its a known fact that the Fed Rate takes months, maybe years, before its effects propagate through the economy. The 2.25% raise in just a few months is the steepest increase in decades, one of the most proactive moves ever done.

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But we as a society need to also be proactive and understand what this means. It means higher mortgage rates, higher rates for car loans, more difficult student loans, more expensive debt.

There are a couple of... other state banks... who are ignoring the issue and are dropping rates right now, despite the current state of the economy. Those are the ones who seem to have a short-sighted view on the world.

USA is actually leading the charge and is more proactive than most other countries on this matter. Furthermore, our political system is talking about it, and we're right now talking about it here on news.ycombinator.com.

We're all being proactive and forward looking right now. And even back in 2020, the political system had the debates and forward looking statements about inflation risk vs COVID19 recession risks. No one ever stopped looking forward.

Was it perfect? No. But no one's perfect when looking into the future. But the political system absolutely discussed and decided upon what we should do. I don't think anybody was short-term thinking at any of these points, we were just trapped between bad choices.

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For the most part, the super-low rates from 2010 through 2019 have been confirmed to be a good idea, as it kept inflation at the 2% for the duration. We were roughly on target. But we also were in a mystical time, of warped thinking of cheap money for the duration.

I'm referring to the complacency of the last 10 years, when every time the fed even muttered about raising rates they caved to Wall St panics and politics. Those super low rates are primarily responsible for everything from the insane wealth inequality we've developed over the last 10 years to housing becoming largely unaffordable to people losing their shirts gambling on bitcoin.

What kept inflation at 2% was a perfect historical moment in global growth/globalization that will not come again in our lifetimes. Now when we need to borrow and invest in our economies the most, the cheap money is nowhere to be found up because we spent it all.

It was a big party, and instead of having a few drinks and going home slightly buzzed we binged out, threw up in the toilet and are now waking up in a puddle of our own making with a raging hangover. And now all of a sudden we're being proactive because we've decided drinking a glass of water might be a good idea? Yeah, it was a good idea last night. It's the only idea left now.

> What kept inflation at 2% was a perfect historical moment in global growth/globalization that will not come again in our lifetimes.

If that "perfectly balanced 2% inflation" was pushed away with say, the central bank raising interest rates, what do you think would have happened?

We would have had deflation. Which is incredibly dangerous. Its not even a question, all of that inflationary pressure (low rates, QE1, QE2, QE3, etc. etc.) the central bank pushed from 2010 through 2019 was just barely able to sustain 2% inflation... the target.

-----

We probably could have afforded to rock the boat a bit more than we did those 10 years though.

A target chosen completely arbitrarily. Obviously deflation is playing with fire, but I see no reason why something closer to 0% inflation would have been an issue. Maybe even a quarter or two of deflation wouldn't have killed things. Things more or less cost the same year to year? People would be less incentivized to invest unless they have an idea they think will have a return that beats a savings account? Cool, maybe slow, steady growth and savings could have stored up a decent cash pile for... oh, I don't know, a pandemic and a full blown war amongst (by world standards) wealthy nations? Those fun unforeseen events that I guess those in power (in the west at least) arrogantly deemed were no longer possible?

There are probably literally a thousand proverbs in a thousand languages, probably more in languages lost to time, that amount of some version of "when times are good, prepare for the bad". This is fundamental human knowledge.

I guess we generally agree, I just get frustrated when institutions like the fed, who are politically insulated by design, fail to appreciate their responsibility or make full use of their privileged position. Seems like for most of the last ten years leadership in general was conflict-avoidant to a fault.

How do low rates lead to wealth inequality?

Because the rich get to borrow and buy assets and assets go up in prices.

The haves benefit way more from cheap debt than have nots who can't take out debt or have appreciating assets to begin with.

Explain it like I'm 5 (or pls link me, happy to read more):

Previously the rich were borrowing easily and buying assets that go up in price bc...easy money. i.e. Houses appreciate really quickly, people can't afford them, the median income is outstripped by the median price etc. etc.

Now rates are going up but more people need to lose their job and be able to afford even less just at a lower price? i.e. Houses appreciate slowly but cost so much that even though the median price of a home is lower, most people still can't afford it bc the monthly is too high?

It seems like in both scenarios most working people can't afford things despite the interest rate being in the single digits unlike the 80s bc the interest rate on your money is so low and the cost/ownership of day to day items (say, a phone which was $15 for a house and is now ~100 per person per month) is wildly more.

not only that. if houses prices go down and it looks like a trend for the coming years people who could now afford a house won't put the money into it

Housing is a supply problem. Unless we all learn from Japan and Singapore, there is no other way to increase supply

Raising rates kills relatively inefficient, unproductive jobs, as it's harder to get a loan. So a business needs to be more profitable to survive in a higher-rate environment, to pay down the interest.

Now when the economy is in a crisis, sometimes you want those inefficient, unproductive jobs just to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks to stimulate the economy. That's when you lower rates.

The issue is we've lowered rates to near zero and held them there for so long the economy has gotten addicted to them, so now when the next crisis comes we have nowhere to go. If you think the working man will suffer from raising interest rates now, I think you'd be horrified by the experiment where we keep rates at zero and then a legit crisis comes along, and there's just nothing the fed can do but let market forces play out. That's one way to get great depression part II.

Plus super low rates has other knock on effects. Savings accounts become essentially worthless in the face of even mild inflation, so people speculate/gamble more in the markets. Also the super low interest rates exacerbated the housing shortage by making it profitable, for the first time in history, for financial firms to invest in single family homes en-masse.

I'd say trimming the unproductive jobs from the economy now, and the subsequent relatively mild unemployment it will produce, is the lesser of two evils choice. Interest rates are an incredibly blunt instrument, raise or lower someone always gets hurt.

Real yields on treasuries have surpassed the average GDP growth rate of the 21st century. That’s restrictive by any measure.

I think another factor is the rise of china, which ramped up massively in that time, hid inflation.

We thought the near 0% rates had no consequences except for housing and a few other non china influenced products. It turns out the inflation was there but china's ramp up hid it. In fact, in hindsight we saw inflation everywhere except in china's manufacturing (and perhaps an oil sands boom helped too). But china manufactured so much of what we consume we didn't notice the consequences.

Inflation everywhere? Like in car prices? Food costs? Eggs? Milk? Butter? Paper? Wood? Lumber? Orange Juice?

These things aren't made in China (or at least, the USA largely eats milk-and-eggs from USA and/or Canada), and for the 2010 through 2019 period, their prices were incredibly stable.

What American manufactured product (or agricultural product) inflated from 2010 through 2019 to a degree beyond which was reasonable?

--------

The main issue with the Fed, was that they made the wrong call on Inflation in 2021, thinking it was "transitory". Now that we've had a year, I can agree with the inflation doomers that the inflation was in fact sticking this time around.

However, the inflation doomers were wrong from 2010 through 2019, so you'll have to forgive me for not listening to the boys who cried wolf.

>The main issue with the Fed, was that they made the wrong call on Inflation in 2021, thinking it was "transitory".

They made the wrong prediction, but the Fed isn't in the business of making predictions. It makes sense that they didn't want to crash the economy while people were still largely intent on staying at home. The Fed's mistake was caving into Trump's pressure to reverse quantitative tightening when the economy was healthy in 2019. When an unexpected disaster inevitably struck, they little headroom to lower interest rates, so they had no choice but to ramp up quantitative easing.

I maintain that this Fed tightening is manufactured consent to be ruled by an aristocratic class in charge of government. Rent seekers in their twilight years convinced future agency must directly build upon their efforts by propping up their wealth working in the industries they own all the valuable real land and infra capital.

A minority has monopolized agency and insulated themselves from real work using a historical basis that there’s always been bean counters who divvy up public production, take 5 for themselves and give 1 to the next person in the public line. It’s a hard job being stingy, after all.

It’s government quota on free trade abstracted into technical jargon and made unfalsifiable.

>Its warped all of our thinking.

Sort of. People who entered the workforce after around 2015 have no idea what is coming. Those of us who entered the workforce in the mid to late 1990s have already seen the movie a couple of times and know exactly what is coming. For those that don't know, the real economic pain typically comes during the 2-4 year period after the recession has technically ended. When you're actually in the recession it doesn't feel like it and people debate whether we really are in one, as they are doing today. It becomes apparent a little later.

NASDAQ is UP 20 or so % from just before the pandemic. That’s how inflated things got in the last two years. The person you’re responding to is right on the money.

"uncharted waters" is so tired.

When's the last time they were "charted" economically? Things have been changing constantly for a century, basically.

> For the rest of us, it's very much uncharted waters.

Aren't economies all uncharted waters until they aren't (e.g. hindsight)? 2 years ago we hit a global pandemic and tech stocks were trading at absurd PE levels 6 months later. So, no one really knows "where this will end up".

> The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no dividend be valued accordingly.

Agree with the latter part of your statement, but no way have we hit "stability". Yes, taking away the ultra-loose money policy had to happen, but doing so has perturbed the system and it's going to take a while to stabilize.

I agree with you. But I also think this companies have potential for earning money. Real money. FB has incredible aí models and platforms as well as interesting hw products. But they keep pushing publicity for creepy projects such as their second life version.

So what happens is that they have tons of fantastic things they do not properly use.

I also think that media has chosen Zuckerberg to hit. Yeah. Lots of contradictions etc, but if anything, he is not stupid.

> Lots of contradictions etc, but if anything, he is not stupid.

What makes you think that? Especially after just pointing out that the strategy he himself has put front and center as the present and future of Facebook (Meta) is "creepy", when you think they have other things that could generate money?

> which offers no dividend be valued accordingly.

FWIW Meta has apparently done $15 billion in buybacks this year which gives them a 4% yield at current cap. Investors generally prefer buybacks to dividends because of tax advantages, so this should actually have helped their stock more than a 4% div yield would.

A 4% yield is not very good when you can buy risk free treasuries yielding more.

Meta's shares outstanding have barely changed over time. Issuing equity to employees dilutes share count, buybacks counter this somewhat.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...

At current valuation multiples buybacks are pretty smart for Meta, but many of these companies were doing buybacks at 3% yield valuations

Very few s&p companies are hitting 4% yields on their dividends/buybacks. Meta shares outstanding are down more than 3% since last year.

Dividend is different than a buyback. Buying back at a 3% earnings multiple is not equivalent to a 3% dividend.

It's much worse for shareholders. The company is investing in something that yields below the risk free rate of return.

Put another way, if they gave that same money back to shareholders via a distribution, the shareholders could earn more buying US treasuries with that distribution.

Buybacks are largely motivated by execs using company funds to increase their compensation, even if ROI is poor on the buyback. Otherwise they would never buyback at such low yields. Dividends don't go to option/RSU holders.

But anyway, a buyback at 10% earnings yield like Meta has, roughly, is a good use of funds

Buybacks have a lot of motivations. Execs trying to boost stock is certainly one. But shareholders do prefer buybacks. Claiming otherwise is just wrong. If a shareholder wants to get out of the equity and into bonds since rates are high they can cash out through the buyback.

> Put another way, if they gave that same money back to shareholders via a distribution

They literally are. Buybacks are just as much shareholder distributions as dividends.

Buybacks are not distributions. A company can buyback 99% of it's shares and if the stock goes to 0, the shareholder never got anything. Buybacks increase ownership percentage, and only if they outpace dilution via other means.

The airlines did a ton of buybacks over the years, and their stocks are down. Owning a larger percentage of a stock that's losing value doesn't do you much good.

To say blanket that shareholders prefer buybacks is just wrong. Ignorant shareholders may prefer buybacks at 3% ROI, smart shareholders will prefer activities that yield far higher.

If I can buy an IG bond that yields 6%, why would I want my company to use their cash to buy a 3% yielding asset? Just bubble era mentality fostered by a market that was distorted to the upside via ZIRP.

Buybacks are just distributions that give shareholders the option of taking the money or having the company reinvest it for them. If you think you can get better returns elsewhere take the distribution. If you don't let the company reinvest.

Buybacks are not distributions. They give you an increased ownership percentage. If the company goes bankrupt you never got any benefit from the buyback.

The return of the buyback is only known at the time you sell your shares, because the earnings yield and valuation of the company are dynamic, and buybacks defer the gain until time of sale.

A company buying back at low ROI is not equivalent to paying out dividends from cash flow

Don't know how to make it any clearer, seems you're using layman's knowledge and fundamentally misunderstand the mechanisms here

> If the company goes bankrupt you never got any benefit from the buyback.

Only if you choose not to take the distribution. If you do then you're out and the company going bankrupt means nothing.

Going by the current inflation and unemployment trends, the economy won't stabilize for a year at the very least. We have a very difficult situation. Inflation is high, unemployment is low. In 2008, we had low inflation and high unemployment, but not this time. So, with the tightening of interest rates, unemployment has to go high. With unemployment increasing, prices of goods will fall due to decrease in demand. At that time, hopefully inflation will go on a downward trend.

The expected inflation in US is around 2-3% and until we see inflation heading towards those numbers it's hard to say economy is stabilizing.

For comparison, the expected inflation in India is around 8-10% and that's why you don't see the pinch in the Indian economy right now even with the tightening of rates.

I am no predictor of the future, but more likely the US interest rates will hit the range of 10% before we start seeing any easing in inflation. Once we see unemployment numbers going up consistently for a couple of quarters that will be the sign of economic stabilization I think.

The low inflation and high unemployment in 2008 came after Fed tightening took effect and the recession was in full force.

We'll almost certainly see the same thing this time within the next year.

The Fed let employment velocity and unemployment go far too low to avoid a severe recession. They should have started tightening far earlier

Why are you speaking as if high unemployment is better than high inflation?

Am not saying it's better, am saying it's inevitable.

Remember that buybacks are another way of returning money to shareholders, and Meta bought 10% of it's shares this year. A 10% yield is pretty significant and reflects its high PE ratio.

However, they took on 10bn in debt this summer, joining Apple and the other FANGS. These companies claim to have high margins.

For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more, and its revenues are shrinking - that's not a growth stock and that's not an honest earnings. If you need to spend the money to continue to make sales, it's part of your operating costs. If you need to borrow money to continue to operate, you don't have a margin.

At least Meta is genuinely spending its borrowed money on future growth (trying to build this VR thing) and is continuing to grow revenue in local currency terms . We might not believe it would work, but it's honest margin. Not a zero profit growth stock - yet.

I think we are in a wierd situation where some companies are being more honest than others, and the honest ones will be punished until the pendulum swings in the next 2 quaters.

> For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more...

NB that having a large cash reserve and borrowing more money are not mutually exclusive. From a large company's perspective, borrowing money when times are good and money is easy to get are low gives the company a "war chest" to either be able to suddenly invest money quickly should the need arise, or to weather long drawn-out storms, when times are bad and money is hard to get.

EDIT: Apple has around $100B in debt, and around $202 billion in cash reserves; it could pay off its debt tomorrow if it wanted to; but then it would have "only" $100B in cash.

Good point

I get 37% based on what it was when I started in 2017, and that's net over attrition during the same time. Absolutely crazy. They need to not only clear out some deadwood but also change their engineering/evaluation practices so they don't have 10K engineers working on projects that only exist because of NIH syndrome and/or impact whoring.

Our startup spends a little bit on Facebook Ads (across FB, Instagram, etc). It's very clear over the past few months that there's trouble in the ads engine. Attribution is a mess, ad efficiency fluctuates randomly, the UI and API are flaky. I don't know whether this is a result of the ios privacy changes, the broader economy affecting ad spend, or internal issues... Maybe a mix. But it's clear that Meta's main revenue engine is a complete mess at the moment.

PS it's not just us. We've seen industry-wide data showing that it's a broader issue.

They've gotten so damn greedy.

On the mobile app literally over half my feed is ads.

I don’t know if there’s any merit to this idea, but it seems to me that saturation can become a real problem.

At this point skipping a story or feed ad in Instagram is like a nearly instant reflex for me.

Plus, the programming on the recommendations is laughably amateur for company as resourceful as Meta. If I interact with an ad one time I’ll see the same ad over and over for days or weeks.

Sure, I was curious for a second, but it seems strange that Meta can’t tell that I’m not interested anymore just by monitoring basic usage of the UI.

At the end of the day the advertiser is the one left paying for these repeated ineffective ad impressions.

Somewhat related, I am a little surprised Meta hasn’t tried a Discord-like revenue model where paid annual memberships bestow quality of life and cosmetic social status types of benefits. Even if it wasn’t their main source of revenue it could at least diversify the business and lend some stability to their revenue.

Facebook’s revenue per user is less than $10. Discord charges $99/year for Nitro. I feel like Meta has such a one-track mindset on advertising that it doesn’t consider different revenue models for its businesses.

Meta spends a lot of time talking about the metaverse but Discord is already the metaverse. Why isn’t there a subscription Meta Quest game pass with Discord-like social features? It’s a no-brainer.

Where’s the “pro” paid version of Instagram? Why doesn’t Instagram sell subscription access to things like exclusive camera filters, stickers, and editing tools?

I feel like the company is full of missed business opportunities.

Actually, that's a real thing advertisers DO want.

It's called retargeting.

> that's a real thing advertisers DO want

I think GP is talking about a more specific thing, and it's one I experience all the time too: that I'll visit a website briefly one time, by accident, or to satisfy some curiosity, or look up the specifications on something I already own, or to get a link to send to a friend, or whatever other non-purchase reason, and then get shown ads for their thing over and over and over again until the end of time despite the fact that there's a 0% chance that I will ever buy it.

I'm sure it's true that, in the general case, advertisers want to show ads to customers multiple times, but in these particular cases, they shouldn't want to show them to me -- I'm definitely not going to buy the thing, and they're wasting their money, and it seems like Facebook ought to be able to better differentiate between users like me who will definitely not convert and users who might (like GP said: seems like there ought to be detectable patterns in the way I do or don't engage with the content that should signal my lack of interest).

Exactly what I’m saying. I clicked or expanded something out of momentary curiosity. Maybe the ad was provocative or mysterious and I wanted to see what the deal was.

Step two, I get retargeted. That’s fine and expected.

Step three, I get retargeted. Again. And again…and again.

What I don’t understand is how Meta/Instagram can’t figure out at least a little bit sooner that I was clearly just satisfying my curiosity and now every time I see the same ad I scroll by extra fast or otherwise interact in ways that should indicate disinterest.

People complain about this all the time.

It is annoying, but it's not illogical.

If you have looked at something once, say there's a 99% chance that you have no further interest in it. But the 1% chance that you are potentially going to buy it after being shown the ad again is still much better odds than showing it to a random person, or a random person who is somehow correlated to the target market.

Even after seeing the ad 50 more times and ignoring it, you are probably still a statistically better lead than someone who has never interacted with the ad. They're not making a strong assumption about you, even though it seems that way. They're making a very weak assumption based on the small number of people who clicked once, hesitated, saw the ad 49 times more, carried on hesitating, and now are finally ready to buy.

It definitely isn't some big problem that bothers me at all.

I do wonder if advertisers can turn that behavior off and/or limit the number of times their product is shown to the same person.

I also wonder if Meta has some kind of model that's predicting post-impression interest.

>At the end of the day the advertiser is the one left paying for these repeated ineffective ad impressions.

If advertisers had a better option, Meta will have gone out of business by next week.

My feed is mostly not posts from people I know (for some reason it has started sending me tiktok length clips of standup comedians). Actually it is not so bad, some of the clips are pretty funny, but I could get that sort of content from tiktok or youtube I guess, I just happen to use the facebook app because it is already installed.

Their fundamental advantage was network effect, I guess that is dead now that like 1/5 posts I see is from a friend.

People have stopped posting on facebook. That's the reason for increasing content from other sources.

I suspect the reason why people have stopped posting is because of increasing content from other sources. It's definitely my reason.

It's a negative feedback loop.

Yep, one of the main reasons I stopped using FB many many years ago was that they made it so hard to view the posts I actually cared about, and gave the user almost no control. It was clear at least a decade ago that FB didn't care about users and just saw them as chattel to squeeze for money.

My understanding is that this is the strategy: the network effect method for choosing what content you want (FB/Insta) is getting beat by the "algorithm determines what you are interested in" method for choosing what content you want, so Facebook is pivoting to the latter.

Maybe Myspace should make a concerted push back into the space Facebook has I guess decided to vacate.

It seems crazy to try and compete with Tiktok on their home turf, they sound to have a pretty competent implementation and Facebook has got to be about as nimble as a barge at this point.

Meanwhile I constantly get ads for restaurants and other businesses almost everywhere but the state I live in (California).

I routinely get ads for Boston, NY, Japan, Taiwan, Germany.

I've been to NY and Japan but none of the other places. So I don't think it's using my previous locations.

It's really hard to configure FB to target actual locations as opposed to people interested in those locations.

You've been to NY, so you're interested in NY, so FB will make money fleecing restaurants in NY wasting their ad money on you.

If you work somewhere like Facebook, this is totally unsurprising. There are probably thousands of engineers writing yet-another-framework and working on the 100th re-invention of the wheel for some random internal product that users will never see. The engineers actually solving business problems are almost always understaffed and under-appreciated, hence why the product sucks.

I use it on the browser to check one or two groups and on my phone for events, it's a mess. On the groups I always want to check for the most recent posts because it doesn't have a lot of activity and besides countless things I've tried it always wants to show the posts ordered with its algorithm. It's also like:

post AD post AD post AD

I'm used to ads, I grew up watching cartoons and shows on prime time old airwaves TV and listening to music on Top 50 radio shows. This is worse. No other media is as bad as Facebook ad-wise and no other media is worse than what prime TV and radio where in the 90s. They devolved.

49% ads, 49% content, 2% "news feed isn't available right now" if I scroll too far (a couple dozen screens). Been like this for ages.

Is over half your feed is labeled "Sponsored", or are you looking at other things as ads?

What does it mean when attribution is a mess? Or efficiency fluctuating?

Does this imply that Facebook is showing ads in places they should not be, because they have inventory they cannot sell?

Hard to confirm that your ads are converting, and wild daily/weekly fluctuations in return on ad spend.

> What does it mean when attribution is a mess?

Attribution means being able to "attribute" a user and the conversions (eg signups, purchases, etc) they do back to your ad spend. So typically, advertisers want to be able to know that e.g. this ad campaign spent $100, led to 5 clicks, which led to 2 sign-ups and 1 purchase. Before the iOS privacy changes, Facebook could piece all those things together even though the ad might be running either on Facebook or another app, and the conversions are happening in your ad. Aka they could "attribute" the events back to the ad. With the new changes, Facebook can't put all those pieces together as easily, so they can either only do it on an aggregated basis (ie not user-by-user), and/or use probabilistic "modeling" to do attribution. This is good for users, since they are less likely to be tracked, but bad for advertisers who now cannot easily know how effective their ad spend is.

> ... efficiency fluctuating

Let's say one day you spend $1000 and get 100 purchases, that's $10 / purchase. A purchase nets $15 for you, so that is good ad spend. The next day, you spend $1000 and only get 50 purchases, so it's $20 / purchase and you are losing money on your ad spend. These numbers fluctuate a lot more wildly than they did in the past, and it seems to happen randomly, making it hard to commit to spending a certain budget.

This is probably related to attribution, because Facebook uses a lot of Machine Learning to predict who to show an ad to, where to show it, etc based on past conversions. But if they can't really attribute past conversions, it's hard for their Machine Learning model to consistently get results.

iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements. Meta is dealing with it currently - so are all small businesses who relied on good conversion from their ad targeting that has gone to isht since then.

Apple will probably fill in that void at some point they've got a lock on all that intelligence. I'm curious how long it will take and how they will manage to do it without stepping on privacy toes.

If Apple doesn't, it seems a bit insane to miss the opportunity.

Note that I strongly dislike adtech as a business model, but my hat is off to their cunning marketing if Apple pulls it off.

As much as I can’t stand any company involved here, if apple does what you suggest it would be far more offensive than any other supposed antitrust violations alleged over the last few years.

They have an advertising platform already, right?

Apple has been around for a while, they I wonder if the company has some institutional 'survival instinct' that's identified growing the ad platform become too much as long-term unhealthy. It is a corrupting influence that makes the consumer into the enemy, after all.

They've also managed to become incredibly huge while somehow mostly dodging the eye of regulatory bodies. Privacy could mess with that track record and I'm sure they are aware of that fact.

> iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements

A problem I see with FB is that they don't control anything on which they run. They run on stuff from their competitors: it's either Google (Chrome / Android), Microsot (Windows / Edge) or Apple (OS X / Safari / iOS).

Despite the downturn these three behemoths are still enjoying a market cap in the trillion+. Meta is actually down to $360 bn. Meta controls neither the OS nor the browser.

They want to change that by having people switching en masse to the Metaverse but I'm really not sure this is happening.

But Facebook is a platform unto itself. If it was still an enjoyable product that everyone used, and connected to their local interests and groups on, they could still have great, targeted advertising I think. But people don't really seem to use it much anymore in earnest, and their targeting probably relied more on 3rd party scripts across the Internet which are being restricted.

I'm still in the habit of clicking that Facebook bookmark occasionally, and have a few extend circle contacts who regularly post. But nine out of ten times the page does not even update anything beyond the server-side populated parts above the fold. Those "story" or what they are called snapchat(?) clones? They work even less frequently. Sometimes they do, so I assume that it can't really be a systematic failure on my side like some weird browser configuration issue. Apparently Facebook, the website, is crumbling on the inside (technology) as much as on the outside (audience).

> Apparently Facebook, the website, is crumbling on the inside (technology)

This is what makes me really uneasy about React. I feel there is too much cargo cult of a technology that doesn’t even work for their creators in the first place.

> They want to change that by having people switching en masse to the Metaverse but I'm really not sure this is happening.

The tech isn't even close to there yet.

Current gen VR tech demos sparks the imagination, and it's definitely great for people that want to like it... But that's not even close to good enough for mass adoption.

Their teased prototypes look like a solid upgrade, but it's still not going to be enough.

Mobile procedures just don't have enough graphics power yet and the one's we do have consume too much power. We're missing several hardware breakthrough before mass adoption becomes likely from my perspective as a VR headset owner.

It's probably gonna happen eventually, but not necessarily with current tech.

Meta might succeed if it stays on the ball and keeps pushing for centuries, but i don't think it's management will do so.

> centuries

Centuries? I haven't taken a close look at VR (though I'm flirting with buying a headset soon, just for kicks...) but I'd always assumed it was more like 10-25 years away.

What are the hardware breakthroughs that you think would do it?

True lightfield display would be a start....

Which reminds me, whatever happened to magic leap?

They burned through an ungodly amount of money. There was a headset that they released four years ago - it was a flop. Similar deal to the hololens, first generaion aimed at developers. Recently they've pivoted and there is a second generation headset announced that is aimed at business users.

Flailing about? And of course what they were doing was NOT true light field display.

Brain implants. Or very light AR glasses.

Are you going to be willing to install a brain implant from Facebook? Dear God. It's like something out of a dystopian movie. No amount of money will convince me to do something like this, especially coming from Facebook, but any corporation really.

Very light AR glasses can be an interesting proposition but they will not provide the VR immersive experience.

I'm not sure what people expect from VR but it's not Ready Player One and will not be for a very long time. However, playing Half Life Alyx is quite phenomenal even today on current hardware.

I would bet money that Meta is going to fail spectacularly at their attempt to build the metaverse.

And it will be fun to watch from the outside.

Unfortunately, I don't expect this endeavor to give interesting fruits to humanity, but sometimes happy accidents happen.

Only thing I can think is that GP is making a sports reference (1 century = 100 runs in cricket) a la "home run" being used to mean a smashing success.

This reminds me of what Apple did just before Web came to the fore. They had something called HyperCard. Then they had something called "Agents" for automating your online activities. But neither of those platforms succeeded.

I walked in oculus for like 10 minutes, and I puked. The technology isn't ready.

Lots of people get car sick but nobody would say that the car isn't ready yet.

I'd bet those people only use cars when needed. Nobody will go cruising on a puke machine.

And we never need Oculus for anything. That's a big difference.

*for you.

for most people, I'd posit.

Very few people need oculus/VR, while a lot people need cars. Possibly a lot more like 10000x

honestly i want to know, what need is there for it? Why should i wear something on my head? what advantage does it have on computers/ handheld devices? what can i do on a VR headset that I can't already do on a computer or handheld device?

Sounds like a difference in kind.

First of all, no one gets car sick while driving - already a major difference to VR. Secondly, most people who can get car sick can avoid it by sitting in the front row and looking only straight ahead.

Finally, even for people who get hopelessly car sick as passengers no matter what they do, the advantage of a fast safe private ride often outweighs the discomfort - especially since no one is spending more than 1h in a car more often than a few times a year. It is very hard to imagine what application could make VR give even close to the amount of utility that cars give you.

The biggest question isn't even whether its technology is ready. The biggest question is WHY?

Why as a consumer, do I want to wear something on my head? especially since, handheld phones are already way more engaging than I need. Are VR headsets just another entertainment device (something I have way too much of already) or will it facilitate work from home?

You know, I've been wondering what could possibly possess Meta to be so, "FUCK YEAH, ALL IN MF'ERS!!!" about the metaverse for a while now. This actually makes a lot of sense; companies control the platforms we are on, which then determines how we must operate (read: which prevents us from invasively monitoring you as much as we'd like), so why not control the full stack as people close more doors on us?

I still think they are going to fail spectacularly there, but I suppose I can't blame them for trying.

Perhaps they shouldn't have bailed on making phones. Android phone arena is still very messy and they could just...have good hardware and a slick skin on Android and probably make a go of it.

I know I'm armchairing the devil so to speak but I think this would have been a good long term play for them, but I imagine their expertise at the time was antithetical to hardware.

Meta/Microsoft/Amazon all did not want to plow the billions of dollars and years it takes to develop hardware that can compete with iPhone and Android.

They bet that they did not need to, but unfortunately for Meta, looks like they should have.

Not even compete with Android, just build a better Android phone, and sell it near cost (or at cost). Would have given them troves of data I'm sure.

The muscle is around contract negotiation with the carriers and co-opting those partnerships, but they had the money to burn on this.

Who in their right mind would buy a Facebook phone, considering the neverending security issues, data leaks and total disregard for user privacy?

The same people that still use Facebook. Which is to say, we could probably find a couple of billion people who couldn't give two rats asses about all that, and just want to respond to Aunt Nancy's political rants[1] in a space where everyone can see.

[1] Or watch Feel Good Videos ABOUT People Spontaneously HELPING Poor ANIMALS Trapped In A PREDICAMENT [2].

[2] That the people in question may or may not have put them into.

I genuinely despise the people that make [1][2] for monetisation purposes and ad dumping. Intentionally torturing and starving small animals for likes. Fuck.

7-10 years ago it would have sold. Especially if they marketed is as "use FB as your address book".

It would tell if it was like one plus. Premium phone at a discount. One plus has horrendous privacy issues

I would've loved a basic FB integrated tablet for my parents. Something that had easy video chat for the kids. This would have worked really well with the friend graph. My options both on Android and iOS leave a lot to be desired.

The Meta Portal is exactly what you want. The hardware is actually pretty nice.

I mean people buy google phones, it can't get a lot worse than them. And they aren't bad phones either.

Imo at the end of the day people don't give two shits about privacy, convenience is king

They all DID plow billions of dollars into phone efforts, but they just couldn't muscle their way into a competitive position

They could all definitely manufacture Android devices and hold some Android sub-market share, but that business isn't interesting to them. They wanted to control a platform, and when it was clear that wasn't going to happen (after spending many billions), they gave up.

Clearly they needed to plow more billions and years. They are competing with company that has spent a decade+ developing a retail store presence as well as iterating over and over on their product.

But Microsoft and Google and Meta were not interested in “in person support” or business that does not scale, and part of the price they pay for that is to be gimped by Apple at a moments notice and watch your market cap dive.

I think Google showed with Windows Phone that they were very much willing to sacrifice a few users of their huge platforms in order to sabotage any competitor platforms entirely (e.g. refusing them access to the YouTube API, and refusing to develop a YT app for WP). I think that once Amazon and MS stopped developping their phone OSs, the message was well and truly sent: you either make a Google phone, or you try to make a popular phone without easy access to YouTube and GMail and Google Maps (obviously, Apple was already too big by the time Android really got going for Google to have any chance of hurting Apple more than themselves with this same strategy).

I have a Quest 2 and It's sitting inside a box behind the PC inside a Nike shoebox and when I try to use it, I need to basically go through a whole process all over again. A factory reset as it were because something to do with facebook account wasn't needed... but then it was needed so i made a fake account... something to do with I don't need facebook anymore... something to do with a meta account.... something to do with I needed to switch on dev mode to stop it annoying me about guardian when I want to use it on the sofa... something to do with installing some kind of app on my phone to sync to it to make it work... something about my occulus dev account is invalid... something about....

I can't use the device.

If I dig into the box, and drag it out, I need to deal with all of this stuff. I want to play for example Superhot, but I have no idea how to even reinstall or even if I need to reinstall because I need to login with something above "all over again".

Fucking trash.

The "Metaverse" is just a bad joke regardless if it worked perfectly, but all of this crud means that I can't even be bothered picking up the actual device.

Meta buys firefox.. metafox!

> A problem I see with FB is that they don't control anything on which they run. They run on stuff from their competitors: it's either Google (Chrome / Android), Microsot (Windows / Edge) or Apple (OS X / Safari / iOS).

You do realize you just described the vast majority of all tech companies that exist today, right?

Yeah, and fb is bigger than them. The question is more about what it takes to be a trillion dollar co.

So what? Where's the cutoff? Tell me one tech company besides Apple, Google, and Microsoft that logic wouldn't apply to. (No, Tesla doesn't count.)

The only other tech giant that is a trillion dollar company is Amazon, and they own a lot of platforms. Beyond those 4 there are no other trillion dollar tech cos. The cutoff is pretty clear and the field is small.

The high price of Apple products in markets like India was such a great targeting filter for D2C products by itself. There was a time in 2020-21 when you could literally throw any random ad for a premium product, choose iPhone users as your target, and land wild conversions.

It defies description why they aren't bringing context-sensitive ads back. They didn't follow you all around the Internet, they were relevant in any given context, and you felt less need to block them out mentally.

I was more likely to click on context-sensitive ads. Most targeted ads I see these days are for products that I've already bought in the past few weeks, which just boggles my mind.

Edit: Even today, I'm still seeing ads for a subwoofer that I bought back in early August. Good going, Meta.

I bet that showing ads based on context is somehow limited to people being in that context (i.e. in a specific website for instance), while being able to draw an audience from the entirety of Facebook users (in the billions) is more profitable.

> Apple will probably fill in that void at some point

a) what if they don't? Why should they?

b) I would lose a lot of trust in Apple if they did. I don't buy iOS devices because I trust Apple Ads better. I buy them because I can avoid ads better and my privacy doesn't get shredded in the process.

c) Wouldn't that be a massive antitrust issue?

Apple already is filling that void. If you run your ads on third-party networks, you are beholden to Apple's privacy rules. But if you run Apple Search Ads through, Apple itself, a lot of the same rules don't apply and you get targeting and attribution back.

A lot of advertisers are thus shifting their ad spend into Apple.

But this is just in the App Store, right? Not on web or within iOS spotlight.

Honestly I don't use FB, but my wife does, and I can tell you she spends about 1/100th the time in the Apple App Store as FB.

I don't see Search Ads as having anywhere near the same context.

Yes, their inventory is smaller at the moment, but they also show ads in News and Stock apps (note that those ads are personalized and don't have an ATT prompt by default.. so Apple apps don't have to play by the same rules as others). My guess is they will continue to expand inventory to other Apple apps (eg Maps, etc), but whether they try to build a full-fledged ad platform (where you can use Apple to buy ads in 3rd party apps) is yet to be seen.. they'd definitely have to overcome a backlash if they did that.

Where do you get ads in the Stocks app? At least I don't. Though the yahoo finance news stuff is rather useless.

> what if they don't? Why should they?

They will because they are a for-profit company and there's profit to be had. Apple will likely find a strong marketing angle for their Ad network (won't be the first time they've tried).

Selling hardware is a great business but it gets saturated eventually. The next move for eternal growth is selling services on top of said hardware.

> I would lose a lot of trust in Apple if they did. I don't buy iOS devices because I trust Apple Ads better. I buy them because I can avoid ads better and my privacy doesn't get shredded in the process.

Apple already has a lot of data about you. Consider that they own both the hardware and software experience on an iPhone. I'm having a hard time seeing an alternative here unless you have the time to manage your own phone OS...

> Wouldn't that be a massive antitrust issue?

Only if someone does something about it. I assume G and Meta's lawyers are already working on arguments.

To me it looks like they tried to copy TikTok, with loads of ads and turned a decent product into something no one wants to use.

They still dominate the Indian market simply because TikTok is banned here.

While I don’t undermine the spying potential of TikTok, the ban was strangely timed - soon after a huge investment from Facebook in India’s biggest company (and one with tremendous lobbying power). Only a handful of Chinese apps were banned, even though majority of devices running them were Chinese as well (and went unbanned).

Facebook very well would have lost the massive Indian market as well without the TikTok ban.

Do you think the Digital Markets Act in the E.U. had anything to do with this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/technology/eu-regulation-...

This hasn't gone into effect yet. When it does, it could expand Meta's ability to track users. If Apple is tracking users for ads, then they must extend that ability to third parties like Meta.

I haven't done much with Facebook ads since 2019, but back then the UI was a flaky, buggy mess. It was pretty terrible to work with. At one point they had a "Power Editor" and then a simpler ads interface. They combined these into one unified tool and it was pretty rough.

Our CPIs have been absurd ever since the privacy changes. Meta is fucked and I don’t think people realize how much of an effect this is going to have on the entire internet.

There are large downstream effects the iOS privacy changes are having on mobile advertising and the viability of companies that rely on mobile programmatic to bring people in the door.

Somehow businesses marketed effectively before individualized ad tracking. I don’t think the world is going to end.

Some kinds of businesses did. But the current version of a tech startup didn't. No, the world won't end, but we could be looking at significant economic changes.

Less business were able to. Personalized ads makes it so that more businesses are viable.

Apple is a private company, they decided to limit the current mechanism through which adtech tracked people, and if people dislike it they can switch to more advertising-friendly devices. What I like about the current situation is everything is done freely - no law was passed to make Apple do it, nor make Meta use it.

As consumers start understanding exactly how adtech works - and such education took decades - they are freely choosing devices that limit tracking, and when given the option to opt-out, are opting out at extremely high numbers. This tells you something about what consumers want.

Businesses would be more viable if they learned to market through mechanisms that were less distasteful to consumers.

> they can switch to more advertising-friendly devices

What are they? Android is copying Apple[0]. Desktop?

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/google-plans-android-privacy...

It's a free market, someone can create a pro-advertising phone if they think it will be successful. Plenty of Android phones are chock full of terrible adware.

It's tough for businesses that thrived on the privacy-compromising features of early 21st century adtech. They can adapt or die.

its not though. Android and Google have moats b/c the control the users.

>As consumers start understanding exactly how adtech works

I can assure you that consumers do not. Even someone in this comment section of a technical form didn't know what attribution is which is an important part of how adtech works. Even from an extremely high level the prevalence of the phrase "XYZ is selling your data" despite that not happening is a clear sign that most people just parrot what they hear than actually understand. There has been a large amount of scaremongering about how bad this tracking is to people. This scaremongering drives more people to opt out than people opting out who actually understand how it works.

>Businesses would be more viable if they learned to market through mechanisms that were less distasteful to consumers.

That is not true. If the cost of that alternative marketing costs more than what you will make from doing it then the business is not viable.

I think this is missing a lot of nuances of digital advertising and the environment that business now operate in. The two major types of ads that used to exist were local and brand. Local is pointless for vast majority of today's digital businesses. Brand is very expensive from both a production and spend perspective, it is only suitable for already large businesses, there is also a lot of research that suggest it is very ineffective in actually generating sales for B2C.

Third option was to take out ads in a specialist publication to reach an audience that would mostly be aligned with your product (ie. business that makes chess boards taking out an ad in a chess magazine). This is probably the closest equivalent of targeted advertising today.

The barrier to entry for retail has dropped ridiculously with Shopify, allowing for niche and specialised retailers in a way that was previously not feasible. Acquiring new customers is still the hardest thing for a business to do, always has been and always will be, without the ability to reach new customers and connect with the audience who is interested in the businesses niche that is all dead in the water.

Take a look at the top 20 advertisers, by total amount spent. You'll see, it's almost entirely large companies that don't calculate any kind of ROI and thus are extremely insensitive to CPIs. Companies like Pepsi and Nike don't and can't calculate ROI, they just want to spend a certain number of billion dollars on ads, even if it's just to prevent competitors from having those ad slots.

Now businesses, that do depend on a positive ROI on ad spend, in order to compete and survive: they are F*ked, sadly.

As a user, FB is a hot mess rn so much so that I'm forced to switch to other apps. 8/10 posts are either sponsored or "suggested" by some random page. It's like watching 30 mins of ad to watch 1 min of video on youtube. When I instictively open the app, the first 10 posts (ads) help me in breaking the habit.

They should only keep the engineers that remember how to solve leetcode hard problems /s

Have you ever interviewed with Facebook/Meta? They don't do leetcode problems. Say what you want about them as a company, but I've done quite a few interviews in my career and their process was one of my favorites.

They are notorious for wanting their engineers to spit out memorized solutions of leetcode hards

I have interviewed with them more than a single time, and this is simply not true.

This thread leaves me wondering if, perhaps, interviewing differs within the organization. Lots of confident "nuh-uh"s on both sides.

They don't ask leetcode questions for Front-end engineers AFAIK. It's mostly practical Javascript/DOM/browser questions.

Funnily enough though, I heard once you join as a Front-end engineer, you are pretty much a regular SWE and can join any team and work on any tech, even backend/systems.

it probably depends on the role and team. to say they don’t have leetcode style interviews at any stage for any candidate is “simply not true”

I mean, they do ask algorithmic problems, but first, they're not "leetcode hard" (leetcode hards can get just insane, it's impractical to ask those in an interview setting), more like mediums, and second - out of 6 or 7 interviews maybe 2-3 will be those. Domain-specific / system design ones are more important. Though that depends on the level they're hiring for, I imagine fresh grads get more "write code on whiteboard" types of questions.

the claim was that they don’t do leetcode questions, not that they do easy and medium ones but not hard ones.

Both upthread claims specifically say "hards," which is not true in the last few years. (In fact, LC "hards" are explicitly proscribed.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025666

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025573

Facebook is notorious for using leetcode problems verbatim. Your singular experience does not invalidate that fact.

you're forgetting that it's leetcode pulling their problems from the companies' question pool, not the other way around.

It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, all leetcode "style" questions fall into a particular bucket. Two pointers, graphs, etc. It's not like the company is innovating new types of problems. It's just the same problem reworded.

This has been my experience as well, same for Amazon.

I didn't practice that much since I hate wasting time on useless tasks, and the interviewer literally told me to just leetcode and read the interview book. I asked him a bunch of web questions and he had no fucking clue, all he did was leetcode and interview every year.

Leetcode-style problems yes; "hards" specifically, no.

They definitely did when I did a loop a few years ago. Maybe things changed or you got lucky?

Maybe? 2020 for me. The first wave had me write code to solve a problem.... pretty far from Amazon's rebranded HackerRank/Leetcode nonsense. I was talking to a human being the entire time. They were great about making me feel like they WANTED me to succeed. Next round was more conversational/System Design stuff.

I think you're confused, when people say "they ask leetcode questions" they don't mean they do automated tests

The questions the human is asking you come from a big question bank and a lot of it is listed on LeetCode under the meta company tag because people leak them.

People use Leetcode to practice for those interviews, they don't use the leetcode site in the interview

I guess I am just saying I didn't feel like herded cattle like I did with Amazon's automated leetcode/hackerrank rebranded system.

I mean, now I'm just here to watch the downvotes pile on....

IDK why this is so contentious for folks, it probably varies by team, role, or something else.

I have, and it was straight up leetcode. But that was a few years ago.

Have you ever interviewed with Meta? They are _the_ FAANG company that places the highest weighting on leetcode problems.

From my experience they place most weight on system design. They allow you to get 1-2 neutral flags from leetcoding and still get an offer.

leetcode is a standin for all thing you can memorize and vomit out in in interview.

Designing url-shortner is no different than edit distance.

Meh, I can do a URL shortener in my sleep, but I'd have to study to beat a leetcode test.

its the opposite for me :D

When I did the system design interview the guy told me that zuckeberg created memcached. Not sure if he meant used or invented, could have just been a language thing. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't pass.

A guy from Google told me that a quantum computer can solve all NP-hard problems... They aren't always the best and brightest.

A oft-told tale in FB. Zuck rewrote memcached for FB in 2005. Either you or he is slightly misremembering the story.

Completely not my experience. All the questions I got were word-for-word Leetcode problems. At least Amazon goes through the trouble of disguising them as "Amazon Deliver Trucks going from house to house" instead of "an array of numbers"

I got rejected on an obscure leetcode hard last year in the telephone screen, which was ridiculous considering I had enough practice to destroy leetcode hards.

Though it worked out for me in the end, but I was definitely annoyed for a day or two.

I got rejected and then when they inevitably called me up the next year the recruiter pulled up the feedback from my interview and I wasn't recommended because I rewrote a function to be easier to unit test, after being asked "how would you test this?". By rewrote I mean I added a parameter to take in a fictional db client, rather than instantiate directly.

I told her no thank you and hung up.

Good to hear that it's changed if they're not. When I interviewed with Facebook, they asked a leetcode problem, had me come back into the office for a second one because I got strong feedback from all the other sessions, then rejected me with a suggestion that I should come back in 6 months when I'm better at tree traversals.

This is so false. They absolutely do leetcode problems

Um, when I interviewed, there were two leetcode problems administered by junior engineers to me. A recruiter contacted me recently about a role and I asked if they still ask leetcode questions... got crickets in response.

I had a radically different experience. The worst interview I've ever had was with FB about 9 years ago. I got an offer and it was significantly (like more than 2x) what I was being paid at the time and I turned it down because the interview experience was so awful I couldn't imagine working with the people who had conducted my interview. Even setting aside other ethical concerns, I've added FB to my permanent blacklist of companies I will never work for sheerly because of how shit their interview process is.

Their interview process improved significantly and they had it arguably better than any other FAANG in recent years.

I'm interested in any evidence about this. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing its just a extremely general statement about 5 companies with no facts behind it and would be interested to see whats different between all 5 companies in 2022 in the talent acquisition department.

Eh, must have failed to push it organization-wide.

Well, a friend of mine was invited to an on-site interview at Google once, flew a few hours there, then arrived at the reception, waited for 7 hours, then they told him they forgot about him and he can go back home. Some people have bad experiences for many different reasons (shrug)... Pity it happened to you.

I interviewed with them 12 years ago, it was a long time ago but I remember all the interviewers felt like they had come from a funeral, everyone was absolutely miserable. I knew right then and there I could never work at a company with such negativity, also they wanted me to skip my honeymoon to start with them which I was not about to do so overall a terrible company and experience. And after I started learning about their shady business dealings I put them on a permanent blacklist to this day.

I interviewed with Meta a few months ago and all my interviewers were upbeat, enthusiastic, and excited. Meanwhile my Google and Amazon interviewers looked miserable and bored as fuck.

With Google it's actually been a pattern. Interviewed for them and passed HC three times, but each time I couldn't bring myself to work for them given how bored everyone looked.

A strategy my friend used was to get the "soft offer" and then shop around for a team for as long as it takes to find one that excited him.

That's literally just Google's hiring practices. There is a team matching phase for all engineers.

Cool. This was at AWS.

Oh neat. That is less common as it's usually the teams hiring devs directly.

> also they wanted me to skip my honeymoon to start with them

They must be really strange folks. I can't imagine 1) a company who would propose such a thing to a (potential) employee, 2) a person who would agree to that. Seriously, WTF.

Ask them for a million dollar bonus to do so and a contract saying they'll pay any losses due to divorce later on :P /s

I just joined Meta this year and had to solve leetcode-style problems, not sure what you mean? Maybe that they aren't literally taken from leetcode or taken on leetcode.com?

I have. They definitely ask leetcode type of problems.

I had a recruiter reach out to me about some ML positions there earlier this year, and I was sort of interested in it for a bit. They have an applicant portal where they literally have you practice leetcode problems, and are pretty open that you're going to be asked those kinds of questions in the interview.

Are they at least ML leetcode problems?

No. This was for more of a machine learning engineering role than a pure ML scientist role though.

I had to navigate a dynamic maze involving teleports and boulders to show my leet graphing abilities to join as a test engineer :) Suffice to say I failed. I build test frameworks, manage test network infrastructure, and deploy CI/CD pipelines (and think I'm pretty good at it). I just really suck at leetcode.

Edit: In fact thinking back, they even sent me tips on how to improve my leetcode skills in preparation for the interview! The whole process was completely guided by it.

I spoke to a Meta recruiter a few months ago who offered to send me helpful algo resources for the interview.

Willing to share them?

They ghosted me, but it was in the initial call.

Leetcode problems doesn't mean leetcode.com problems in a narrow sense (aka copy paste).

It means reasonably complex algorithmic and data structure problems you're supposed to solve by coding under pressure, quickly, in interview conditions.

And if you think that's not happening, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

I suppose I AM confused then. I don't mind someone asking me complex algorithmic problems as long as we're WORKING toward a solution together. To me, leetcode means, "you have 45 minutes to solve these 2 or 3 problems... I'll watch".

Algorithmic thinking is kinda what I do. So solving those problems doesn't feel like a bad proxy for how I might perform on the job.

Yeah, we all solve problems using algorithms.

However, how often do you come up with high performance, close to optimal algorithms, on your own, within 45 minutes?

How often do you implement heaps and such as part of your day job, versus using standard libraries or common ones?

lol. meta literally has their own leetcode style training platform for you to practice questions on when you apply for SWE positions.

I interviewed for them. Questions were Front End related. One of the questions were "how could you find a node in an hmtl by id", to which I answered "using the DOM api, a querySelector would do a good job". The interviewer started hypothesising that the querySelector is not available, so we had to start discussing a whole binary traversal algorithm. If that's not leetcode I don't know what qualifies as it

document.getElementById??

That's the DOM API.

It was hypothesized that querySelector was not available, not that the entire DOM API was not available. However, if we suppose that the entire DOM API was not available, there would no way to access the HTML nodes so no algorithm is going to save you anyway.

Basic tree traversal is considered "leetcode" these days? No wonder software is shit.

for html node selection? this seems like a silly jump

Exactly, how many times does anyone ever reach for binary traversal in their experience?

It’s optimising for the 1%.

Tree structures are very common in software. Needing to traverse them is also common. Sometimes people write utility functions to help you do it (that's where querySelector comes in), but it's really bad to think this knowledge is useless in writing software. You can't even list files recursively in a directory if you don't know how to properly do a tree traversal.

There are many algorithms in "leetcode" style questions that almost never get used in real world software development. Tree traversal is not one of them.

Heck, the whole family of lisp languages are nothing but "(non?)abstract syntax trees". Imagine getting reprimanded by a user named `morelisp` :)

And to be pedantic, since DOM trees are not binary trees, it's not a "binary traversal" problem. I encounter binary trees a lot less than the non-binary counterparts, but the traversal algorithm is basically the same.

Yeah, the first "binary traversal" I was willing to excuse as a typo.

By the second: Holy shit go read a book. Please.

I previously worked at Facebook/Instagram for ~10 years and conducted over 1800 interviews (got the t-shirts and hoodie to prove it). leetcode style problems are at the core of the "ninja" interviews. In fact, a lot of leetcode problems are sourced from what Facebook asked before leetcode even existed.

That being said, guidance is to ask 2 medium difficulty questions as opposed to 1 hard one.

Huh, I had an interview at Meta a few months back (which I backed out of) and the (very nice) interviewing prep instructions they provide very clearly stated you should be able to do leet code style questions, preferably two mediums, in an hour. Their interview process felt very organized and prepared overall, although I backed out before actually interviewing with folks.

I was wondering if there is a correlation between hiring engineers who spend their lives memorizing leetcode hard problems and a company's ability to innovate and execute?

Did they really optimize for hiring the top 0.001% of engineers or it's just that the fish is rotten from the top.

It seems to me that the selection process favors Indian and Chinese engineers who are used to cramming for rigorous entrance exams to top universities.

And also Eastern European or ex-USSR countries where highschool STEM curriculum is more difficult than in the west and participation in STEM competitions and olympiads is encouraged for kids.

We had to solve binary and hex division and multiplication on paper for exams and study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary tree traversal in highschool CS. Ugly stuff for a bunch of 16 year olds who just wanted to make Flash games. Really made me hate CS.

This was poked fun at in ex-YU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmrJQaj8sIo&t=240s (sorry, no translation; tl;dr: CS without computers)

Eastern European here. From the mentioned I had binary division, but that was it.

I was solving leetcode-adjacent problems for the entire last year of high school in preparation for the final exam though.

> We had to solve binary and hex division and multiplication on paper for exams

This is not ... hard. It's the same logic as decimal multiplication/division on paper.

> study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary tree traversal in highschool CS

That's more like it!

>This is not ... hard. It's the same logic as decimal multiplication/division on paper.

Do you really think tests where you gotta solve several divisions and multiplications on paper in hex and binary with no aids under time pressure is approachable for every 11 year old who just starts to learn about CS?

It's good to learn and know how such operations are done, but those tests were the bane of my 11 year old childhood.

I wouldn't call 11 years old as "high school".

I think it just heavily favors new grads, who just spent a year+ studying algorithms. Those with full time jobs have to spend precious hours of free time remembering how to do these.

Well, this just sucks about these jobs interviews. I learned quite a bit during my last job and I'd be happy to show some of these to the interviewer, but instead I'm forced to answer questions that I know have nothing to do with what I'll be dealing with. It's always the same story, it's just exhausting.

Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous actually. It's like they don't even believe you were employed when they interview you.

so indian and chinese new grads ?

> I think it just heavily favors new grads, who just spent a year+ studying algorithms.

Year+ is a fair assessment. A proper Computer Science course(4 years!) is mostly about algorithms. Most of leetcode hard would qualify as warmup exercises for my class.

That was a while ago. Right now? My brain is chock full of architectural stuff, k8s, several programming languages, multiple cloud provider idiosyncrasies, etc etc. Can I do leetcode? Yeah sure. Can I do it during an interview? I've tried recently, bombed spectacularly.

I'll probably have to invest the time prepping properly because there's little choice these days. Like you said, it's using up our precious free time. I'd rather be, I don't know, writing some stuff in Rust so I can add that language to my toolbox.

I'm practicing leetcode right now and I'm also working on a side project in Rust. I confirm it's much more fun writing some stuff in Rust.

Please continue to give your honest feedback to employers. I don't do leetcode and I won't proceed with an employer that expects me to interview like that.

This isn't what new grads actually do. They're in the same boat you're in, algo classes have a lot of theory but LC is a different beast entirely

Having the theory fresh in mind is a big help though I think.

Nah, it's the whites who the hiring market favors.

They haven't asked leetcode hard problems for years, at least.

I got 3 hards only 6 months ago. How do you know what they are asking 'for years' do you have access to their questions or something.

I am familiar with Meta's interviewing policy, which proscribes LC "hard" type problems. I don't know the contents of every single interview, obviously. Your interviewer(s) violated explicit policy if you were given LC hards.

In a way does it matter? The interviewers aren’t making the final decisions and the actual hiring committee aren’t stupid and should be able do some basic normalization.

I think it probably matters to the individual interviewees and also matters to the hiring committee because it reduces the quality of the hiring signal.

your interviewers gone rogue theory is hard to accept. Many many people have consistently been getting 'LC hards `for years`.

The problem with companies the size of Meta - and even down to 1/10th the size - is that there's just so many moving parts, it's a day job just to try and figure out how things work and where to implement a change.

It's no wonder that - at least for a while - Google was churning out new products left and right. It allows people to build new stuff instead of have to maintain existing stuff.

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now..” Zuckerberg said.

Zuck is blaming the economy, but Meta's real problem is that Apple tightened iOS privacy. Meta had built a business on tracking people, and when iOS tightened privacy, Meta could not target ads as effectively as before.

It's definitely a problem, but the economic downturn is a lot more significant. Meta allegedly got around Apple's privacy rules.

I used to work in user tracking, and it's very easy to track people down to near-unique from several metrics.

Apple tightening privacy while TikTok is eating their lunch... Not to mention the Metaverse is/was a giant distraction.

Not very relevant, but an observation:

I've noticed that users on HN like to use the phrase "eating their lunch" to describe the dynamic between TikTok and Facebook.

It would be interesting to search HN comments from the past 12 months for "eating their lunch" and analyze what proportion of them refer to TikTok.

Why is that remotely notable? It's hardly an uncommon phrase.

It’s not an uncommon phrase, but it seems like people disproportionately use it in describing this particular situation.

Metaverse is an interesting idea, but they're too quick to hail it as the feature of the company imo. It just looks like an expensive, boring, video game right now.

| Metaverse is an interesting idea...

It's really not though, nor is it an original one. There are real people with real problems in the world and we've seen over and over that increasingly virtualizing our interactions, with a few exceptions, is a great way of kicking those problems down the road.

An idea can be interesting and still be a huge waste of time. I don't think it'll end well for Meta. It'll be super interesting to see how it plays out. I think we might end up with some sweet VR tech, I just don't think it's going to give FB the kind of business they think it will.

> Metaverse is an interesting idea

It just seems like a mix of xbox kinect and roblox

maybe zuck is just having a midlife crisis, who knows

I think he's deluding himself a little. I think VR is going to be a niche product for a long, long time. AR, if cool enough, could maybe catch on. But it needs to be as easy as putting on shades.

Stages of grief. First he blamed employees, now the economy..

Cancel culture is the only scapegoat left

CEOs are collectively hammering these talking points about the economy, pretending that it's 2008 all over again. They want their workers scared.

The thing is, this isn't 2008, not by a long shot. They can keep complaining, but the jobs numbers speak for themselves.

If you think the world’s economy is in good shape, I have an investment to sell you.

You're responding to something I never discussed.

How about "If you think this isn't 2008 by a long shot, I have an investment to sell you." ? Interested now?

The economy is an issue, but the "fault" is not in the economy or the CEO in that there is no fault. A business is not responsible for retaining employees even if the economy is strong. If we prescriptively believe that people ought have money to maintain a basic standard of living then we should have the government provide this service using public money and not private ad-funded money.

It is modern corporate style to have CEO's shed tears (sometimes literally) to show that their cold calculations actually have love behind them, but this is all just PR. We should recognize Mark's statement for what it is — standard corporate PR. And we should offer such statements as much respect as standard corporate verbiage deserves and not get into the substance of the statements as there typically is none.

Not the only problem. Zuck's betting the farm on VR, which is sucking up resources and attention. Even if it reaches critical adoption, how many years before it starts generating true profit?

If he ends up being right, we'll all praise him as a great visionary. They have the means for what it would take. But since I'm not a great visionary, I'll just go on the record with: no chance, there's no real addressable market there...

And their feed is increasingly worse. We might be the product, but this product can walk away.

That was an interesting twist to the barn methaphor actually.

What he meant was "I had hoped _our_stock_price_ would have more clearly stabilized by now..."

They over-hired low[er] quality employees (by his own admission) when the stock exploded in 2020. Now they'll do anything to avoid official layoffs to save face.

At my company...

1. We're aware of the economic situation and what others companies are doing and are just monitoring

2. We decided to just to ever-so-slightly ease off the gas on hiring. It's definitely not a hiring freeze. Do not use those words.

3. Things are delayed just until the budget is discussed

4. No new hires (still don't call it a freeze) <-- We are here

5. Small amount of layoffs ?

6. Large amount of layoffs ?

(1-4 was about 3 weeks.)

I think we work at the same little company. Tbh, we are already kind of at 5., some divisions are getting shut down and people have n months to find a new team. It's a game of musical chairs.

While others find him inconsiderate, I appreciate that Zuckerberg is at least not all corpspeak. Too bat he bet on the losing horse with the Metaverse and now has to stay in until either it succeeds or he gets sacked.

My heart goes out to anybody losing their job, but it's always fantastic to see bad things happening to Meta.

I wonder what the effects of Meta failing would have on society? I can’t think of competing social network for people to migrate to. Would topic forums see a rise in popularity again or would sites like Reddit draw in some of those users.

Something like this I'd guess

https://frinkiac.com/caption/S04E21/888169

Nothing. I'm pretty sure Meta could disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow and after a week of boredom, people would realise that life is actually much much better without it. (I've been off all Meta services since 3 years).

The millions of people using whatsapp for serious matters would beg to differ.

Perhaps it boots the normies offline

> Would topic forums see a rise in popularity

I highly doubt it

> or would sites like Reddit draw in some of those users

probably. I get the impression reddit is doing more marketing to non tech people, and more people I know have said positive stuff about reddit out of nowhere

but also... I feel like this is unrelated, but reddit has seriously gone downhill since what it was in like 2015. It's a good idea but the users make it insufferable

TikTok is the new SoCIaL nEtWOrK.

Facebook (Meta) cannot innovate. Their growth since inception is almost exclusively through acquisitions. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. The core Facebook product is arguably worse today than it was 15 years ago. Meta's response to new market entrants is to just copy their features, and when they do attempt to innovate it's just comically off-base (Metaverse). This entire "Metaverse" play is so ridiculous it's deep into meme territory.

Meta should have plainly seen the writing on the wall with regard to their data collection and privacy practices but either wouldn't, or more likely couldn't, pivot to new areas.

And now Zuck is here saying this hiring freeze is due to the economic situation. Peak comedy. The reality is Meta has no answer for TikTok, BeReal, Apple/Google privacy changes, or whatever else is coming to the market next.

I wish Meta nothing but the worst, but I'm sorry for any unfortunate souls who chose to work their and will be out of a job.

> Facebook (Meta) cannot innovate. Their growth since inception is almost exclusively through acquisitions. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

Innovation at this point != success

Just look at Oracle... they're still alive and doing OK

They don't need to at this point. They have FB, IG, WhatsApp, and Messenger

That's already a lot to begin with, they could've just coasted and they'd be fine

But instead they have their idiot CEO creating PR nightmare after PR nightmare (just look at this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8q2BQOGRGE and tell me he isn't a liability) and funneling billions into what's going to be the biggest business mistake of this decade

Fair point with regard to Oracle, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to compare an enterprise B2B software company with a consumer business such as Meta.

I’d additionally argue that Meta is functionally coasting by way of flailing about on useless products. FB is flatlining, and IG is getting eaten alive by TikTok and BeReal. Oculus is seemingly healthy, and WhatsApp has a dominant and entrenched position. However, what is WhatsApp and Oculus worth if FB and IG fail?

Zuck is absolutely going to call back all the remote engineers that he hired over the past two years to the office, and just like with Tesla, those who refuse will be involuntarily separated. Work from home, _is_ going to die at the megacorps.

Meta already did this / have been doing this. But I think Meta will suffer more from this choice than the employees let go as a result.

“The Metaverse Company” declaring that they need employees to be physically in the same office would be a damning admission of failure.

This is my fear at Google. I'm now remote for family reasons. If for some reason they decide to do layoffs the "cut the remote staff" approach might feel attractive for foolish execs.

Lots of smaller companies that have comparable compensation will continue to offer work from home. If a non-FANG position isn't a dealbreaker for you, you can do just fine if Google does end up requiring everyone to go back to the office.

I'm not terribly worried about the entire industry undoing remote work. Mostly I really like my current job.

> Lots of smaller companies that have comparable compensation

Do you mean smaller companies that all have similar compensation to each other or similar to FAANG? Cause very few companies out there are paying $400k+ for senior engineers. People join FAANG mostly for the pay - the brand recognition is just a perk.

I'm in the same boat. I would be pretty insulted if they reneged on remote work and used that as the primary decision criteria on who to keep or let go. Especially since I took a pay cut to go remote and most of the folks I work with are in other offices anyway.

The pay cut feels like a decent defense to me. Somebody looking to cut payroll by 20% should hopefully look and say "wow, those folks working remotely outside of the bay area, nyc, seattle are getting paid 15-25% less, maybe that is good for us."

I do not understand why so many companies are so intent on getting people back into the office.

I looked at the income statements for a few techs and banks on Yahoo Finance, and for the tech companies their net income is up from 2019 (in some cases doubled), and for the banks it is about the same as 2019 (I picked 2019 because that was before COVID). Companies are doing fine with remote work. I don't get what their problem is.

Companies aren’t purely rational.

Middle managers are probably less effective or at least more obviously as such due to remote work.

They lobby higher-ups, who they have closer contact with than the ICs by definition, with various propaganda

It should be both reassuring & unsettling to know that even experts can't forecast the future. FB / Meta made two large stock bybacks, one with cash and one with debt, at a very high premium.

Just in case you may feel bad for your investments, just remember no one can forecast the future.

> FB / Meta made two large stock bybacks, one with cash and one with debt, at a very high premium.

I don't know enough to understand if that is clearly a bad move or if maybe they had a different strategy.

I mean if they wanted to buyback their own stock it seems that they are not in a position to time the market. Waiting to buy low feels like they are shorting themselves.

They did heavy handed repurchases during the quarter where they saw the first active user dip, before announcing it, then barely did any in the following quarter after the stock took a 40% dive. I'm still bullish Meta, but their capital allocation with regards to buybacks was horrendous to say the least.

What an awful way to announce that. Q&A is over folks, everyone go back to their desk and start working again - good luck!

Such a poor plan. Dropping this in a Q&A means that nothing else said will be remembered. It's also being implemented in a completely asinine way: "individual teams will sort out how to handle headcount changes". Take no culpability for anything, and ensure that the confusion and anger targets the bottom-most level of management. What a classy move!

I'm sure that senior leadership will also be held accountable for the over-hiring they mandated and their teams will be among the first to reduce headcount \s

I'm curious if there was a plant to say "hey are there going to be layoffs."

"Well, Joe, it's funny you ask..."

Layoffs time: move quickly and break people.

If it's likely you'll need layoffs, it's probably best to move as quickly as possible. Otherwise gossip, speculation, and fear have the chance to dominate.

Just in case you didn't recognize the reference - an early Facebook cultural motto is the phrase "move fast and break things" - a tradeoff favoring product development iteration speed over stable infrastructure.

Facebook would then change their motto in 2014 to "move fast with stable infrastructure" [0] - don't know how well that's worked out for them since.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms#cite_ref-43

Problem: We will have hired all of the people we could ever hire within 10 years.

Solution: layoffs

Knowing a few people who work at Meta, it seems that they're deliberately making work less tolerable, with a view towards getting people to leave of their own accord. I know of three people who've been appointed new bosses within the past month. By all accounts these new managers are all jackasses, and are deliberately nasty in meetings and one-to-ones. Nasty CEO, nastier managers, I've advised anyone in there I know to get out now!

This is a well trodden path. They cannot grow forever, nor can the economy. But investors will expect/want monotonic growth. In profits if not in revenue

I expect Meta will be closing labs in the USA and opening them in other, cheaper, English speaking companies.

My uneducated opinion is this company had some downsizing and restructuring coming. But the leading edge of a big wave of downsizes might look like this, too.

Yeah, I'm with you, and then I read 83K employees doing Metaverse? Simply amazing! That must be at least 20 billion dollars a year! The correction in the tech sector has plenty more correcting to do it seems.

That's the total Meta headcount, across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc.

Inverse QQQ?

SQQQ is up 10 percent today.

I doubt it.

My guess is Google/Alphabet will do the same, as they have too high a proportion of people doing things that are neither basic research or contributing to revenue in any way. You can see how that can happen when you have an unconstrained gusher of money. There's effectively zero feedback. However given the weakness of their management (see: gusher of money + lack of focus) it's unlikely that the cuts will make any difference either way. Probably many good people will simply take a buy out and then go get another interesting job.

Netfix? Given their culture and their market problems one could imagine it, but their culture seems to have steered them into trying to fight back. So probably not a big wave, just some trimming, as they have already done.

As for the rest of maAMA-n? They appear to be doing fine; Amazon's retail challenges are more than made up by AWS. Apple and MS are trundling along as if nothing is happening in the macroenvironment (and they each have 40+ years to have worked out their systems).

Apple is down like 6% today on reports of soft iPhone sales. In an economy where people are actually belt tightening luxury hardware sales are not exactly recession proof

They also have a cash mountain and I'd like to own a company that makes 94% of last years iphone sales.

Over 200bn the last time I saw a figure (90bn in cash, the rest invested).

https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp500-compa...

I’m not an Apple bear, I’m saying that it’s a bit naive to say that any company will not be negatively affected by a recession that can result in downsizing or layoffs.

DOesn't matter how much cash they have. Ownership will demand cuts if earnings fall.

Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest outside shareholders and are unlikely to take shareholder action. Third is Berkshire Hathaway and while they do weigh in from time to time it's unlikely in this case.

> As for the rest of maAMA-n? They appear to be doing fine; Amazon's retail challenges are more than made up by AWS. Apple and MS are trundling along as if nothing is happening in the macroenvironment (and they each have 40+ years to have worked out their systems).

Apple -

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/18/23268953/apple-slow-hirin...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-16/apple-lay...

Microsoft

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-20/microsoft...

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-scoop-22

Amazon

https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/amazon-slows...

Please use "MANAMANA" instead.

(doot doo do doo doot)

Netflix never deserved to be in FAANG anyway -- seems like it was just there to make the acronym work.

Therefore your suggestion sounds great!

How about: Microsoft Alphabet Netflix Apple Meta Amazon Nvidia Alibaba

amd?

Netflix looks shaky as hell. They need a huge bet, like Rings of Power or House of Dragons. The entire programming looks so completely awful cookie cutter at the moment.

They are trying to make a play for games. Seems like a market even more risky than films, but whatever.

I'm shocked they don't do more merchandising, seems like easy money since they know what shows are popular.

Is it known whether this sort of hiring freeze affects all levels? I have a friend who's in-progress for a staff role at Meta and I had heard in the past that staff was often "immune to hiring freezes."

"Active interview loops will continue," but also "we will not make any offers until the freeze is lifted." So, go figure.

Edit: IC7+ is explicitly not frozen.

> The only roles that will remain open are SWE IC7+, Data Center roles, and 2023 Intern, Pathway and AI STE class hiring

Imagine being of IC7+ caliber and voluntarily deciding to jump on this sinking ship. I doubt such a person exists. Might be an opportunity to upsell yourself into an IC7[+] offer, though.

Money is still a good motivator

But meta is very stock compensation heavy so you are betting on the company stock at least not dropping considerably like the people that joined in august of last year at a $350 per a share price.

On the other side, joining when the stock is low is great, since you get more RSUs and a stronger chance of them bouncing back up.

Right. And how low can it go?

source?

Internally shared post. Any employee can confirm.

What does AI STE refer to? (AI software engineer?)

I wish they improve products for users. For example, IG on my newest smartphone is the only app which totally freezes on ads stories. You have 80k employees but simple slider in IG desktop version can't keep its position if you close story. Why, it's just a few lines of code. Rather not mentioning content on FB, it was so much better 10 years ago.

It will metastasize

They will throw the book right at your face

I predicted that Facebooks VR/AR gamble won't tak off. Simply because developing virtual content and tools is IMO comparable to game development. Also wearing such a headset for longer time becomes quite uncomfortable. I start sweating under it and most of us here in Europe don't have AC's at home which makes it impossible to use when it's warm.

That being said, I am curious how PlayStation5's VR2 will do. I got the one for PS4 and I didn't really use it. I doubt that the new one will do much better because the headset is still large and many people don't have the necessary space at home.

That assumes that the headsets won't get smaller and lighter over time.

If the threshold for the headsets to become comfortable in mainstream conditions is 10-15 years away, their metaverse will fail.

And yet phones started off big, bulky and with no features and now everyone has a smartphone in their pocket.

I'm not saying that it's impossible. At some point we will reach the "good enough" threshold, that's quite obvious.

However your comment completely missed my point.

The first mobile phone was made in 1973, 34 years before the iPhone. The first commercially available mobile phone came out in 1983, 24 years before the iPhone.

If Zuckerberg bets Meta on the Metaverse, he better be prepared to keep investing with possibly low or no returns for 20+ years.

And VR is a much harder problem.

Of all FAANGs I expect FB to be the first to sink. I see the writing on the wall..

Why?

Their main product sucks and their Boomer user base is literally dying. The acquisitions are keeping them in the game, but Insta has intense competition from TikTok and Snap and YouTube. They don’t have an unsinkable critical product that everyone uses and will continue to use through good and bad times, like search or mail.

Shit maybe they should buy Harley Davidson.

Snapchat is walking dead fwiw.

TikTok is strong, but realistically will be banned across the west next couple years b/c of security problems.

You might hate Instagram, and that's very understandable, but it's going to be fine.

I used to think this about Snap but then https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...

Problem with snapchat is that no one older than 25 uses it. They've already saturated their user base and stuffed as many ads as they can into the app. There's not really anywhere for them to go and they're still losing money.

They refused Facebook's acquisition offer but I think their endgame is getting acquired by Google. Facebook offered $3bn but Google will have to offer much more, at least x5 more.

TikTok being banned would cause immense backlash with the public. Odds are higher it will get replaced before a ban takes place, and Insta isn't exactly stepping up.

Snapchat is still doing fine considering how much competition they have all over the place e.g. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube etc.

TikTok won't be banned because US will force it to relocate all their relevant servers to US and hand in US citizens' data to US agencies. And realistically speaking TikTok is no different than Microsoft, Google and Facebook; instead all data going to one superpower it flows to another and majority of this data is garbage that's inefficiently used to target you with personalized ads. Personal data is mostly garbage like I said but data about specific groups and overall population might be more valuable and important taking in consideration economic competition and arms race between US and China.

Not the OP, and this is just speculation on my part so take it with a grain of salt.

Meta gets the overwhelming majority (97.7%) of their revenue from advertising[1]. Their business model is completely reliant on using user data to sell highly targeted ads to sellers. While most consumers don't actually care what corporations do with their data, governments have been starting to crack down on the types of data that can be collected, and what it can be used for, especially with GDPR in the EU. The less data Meta can collect, the worse their targeted advertising will be, and fewer sellers will be willing to pay - or pay as much - for ads on their platforms. As it is, many companies are moving more towards influencer sponsorship for advertising, cutting platforms like Instagram out of the cost entirely.

The problem is that all of Meta's eggs are in one basket, and that basket's bound to drop. Most other big tech companies have more diverse revenue sources, and so are more robust.

That being said, I disagree with the premise - Netflix is probably going to the first FAANG company to fold.

[1] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

They're still a dominant player in a 2 sided market. They still have traffic (within their site + ad network) and buyers (people wanting to place ads). Even if we remove all user tracking and nuke all attribution they're still going to make a lot of money. It will shift to more national type ad campaigns and/or targeting based on page content.

> Netflix is probably going to the first FAANG company to fold

Why would Netflix go out of business? Are they overly burdened by debt?

Much stronger competition in the streaming space. Disney has better content for every family with kids, so they're first choice. Amazon already has people via Prime. How many more are you going to buy? Possibly one, small chance of two? You've got Netflix and all the others scrambling for that last space in the house.

Plus they don't seem to be able to make a hit show of the kind that gets subscriptions, just a lot of not too terrible content.

Sure, but I do not see why that would cause bankruptcy. Their market cap would shrink, but unless they are over leveraged, they should be able to continue operating without “folding”.

It's not necessarily the case that the company goes bankrupt, it just sort of goes sideways forever. At some point someone will get the brilliant plan of borrowing in order to invest in relaunching the company.

This is interesting. As a parent, we have Netflix, not Dinsey+. See, children love to re-do things over and over, same for tv, my children want to watch wreck it ralph and moana for 100 times.

So, buy one of those "disney classics" bundles and you are good for a long chunk of time. Netflix covers the adults.

That's my feeling at least, I don't like a single adult show from disney.

Without the momentum of subscribers who just haven't bothered to unsubscribe, I suspect they'd already be dead. Like, if they had to acquire those same users fresh, today, I don't think they could.

Instagram and Whatsapp are keeping them alive.

Does Meta make serious money from Whatsapp?

If they play their cards right they could turn WhatsApp into the premier business to consumer contact platform. Not just messaging but also phone calls etc... That could massively reduce the spam calls.

Maybe you could opt in for political calls if they pay you..

Absolutely. FB is a house of cards at this point.

During the first week of July, interns were also notified that there would be no return offers for full-time roles.

In very few cases a favorable enough rating on their performance reviews led to a full-time offer.

I believe most if not all software engineering interns who got a GE performance rating (highest possible rating for interns) received return offers. I think GE is only awarded to the top 5-10% of interns though.

Somehow, Meta managed to overhire in low cost of living areas and will likely look at employee overhead when considering where to downsize.

And yet I'm having emails from their recruiters to join them.

This company is so pure bullshit an hypocrisy at all levels

The initially planned expenses for the year were about $95B.

I know this is pretty common for those big corporations.

But I think that should be put in perspective.

At 500M over more than 10 years Star Citizen is considered a scam or a waste of money and at least a proof of mismanagement.

If Meta vanished tomorrow, would it actually have a negative effect on our lives?

The void in the market would be quickly filled by a competitor (users in other threads have mentioned TikTok...). Whether or not this is a negative is an exercise left to the reader.

Zuckerberg becoming Zorg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg

passed the code and debugging challenge a month ago. recruiting emails have gone cold, figured this was the case.

This is what likely is happening. Zuck and co, just like the Google leaders, need to keep Wall Street happy to try to bolster the stock as much as possible. While I don't know all of the internals of the FB organization, if it is anything like Google, it could probably make the same profit with a fraction of its current headcount. So why was it on a hiring spree? Because it gives the perception of innovation to Wall Street which boosts the stock price.

Since they pay a large chunk of their comp in RSU's that is like printing money to further prop up the price of the stock. Does all of that extra headcount actually create real innovation? Some does, but a lot is just fluff to keep Wall Street happy with their perception of innovation while not really moving the needle with profits.

Now we are in a bear market and Wall Street is rewarding austerity and fundamentals over speculative spending. The leadership of the company is reacting accordingly.

The silver lining is that perhaps this will begin to erode away the nearly monopoly status that companies like Google and Facebook have had in their respective spaces.

I wonder what this means for people I know with accepted offers who haven't yet started.

Anecdotally (I have a friend in that situation), no impact as confirmed by their in-house recruiter.

But it might depend on whether they were pre-allocated to a team (which I understand is very rare, but it does happen).

If I were you I would tell them to break off contact because Meta is actively causing irreparable damage to society as we know it.

Yeah, and the reply they would receive from their friend would be a polite request to touch grass.

People in the real world use instagram and whatsapp all the time without any moral qualms. The main reason facebook as a product is on a decline is because it is simply not interesting to younger people anymore. And even then, FB still manages to occasionally produce features that capture a lot of the audience back. FB marketplace has been a great hit in terms of replacing craigslist.

I am not a Meta employee, and have never been one. But the hate hard-on some people on HN have against Meta just gets really ridiculous at times. We decry echochambers on social media all the time, but are perfectably comfortable falling into ones of our own, without trying to understand how the world outside is really like.

I don't think "touch grass" is an appropriate response to legitimate questions of professional ethics. Comments like this are why I think ethics courses should be mandatory for any CS or engineering degree.

Stating "you should break contact with the recruiter because Meta is causing irreparable damage to society" is not a "legitimate question of professional ethics." It's like saying "you should be rushing the capitol, because democrats are causing irreparable damage to society by stealing the election", and then claiming it was a legitimate question of ethics of democracy. For both of which, the suggestion to touch grass feels pretty appropriate.

I agree with your take on ethics courses being mandatory for CS or engineering college students though. It was mandatory at my college, and I found it to be pretty useful.

EDIT: as pointed out, i incorrectly used "contract" instead of "contact" in the first sentence. Fixed, as it doesn't meaningfully change my point at all. The part relevant to the point I was making was in the "... because Meta is causing irreparable damage to society" half of the sentence.

Who is talking about breaking a contract? I said breaking contact (with recruiters). Your example provides an equivalency so false, I don't really know where to start with it. If I were to alter your analogy it'd be closer to: "Ghost your recruiter, don't work for the Biden Whitehouse" which, if they actually _were_ evil, would be a reasonable thing to say to a friend IMO.

Marketplace is getting to be a nightmare of scams on both the buyer and seller side.

They should start looking for something else as a backup.

they've been over zealous with their hiring for many years, this was bound to happen during economic uncertainty. tack on competition from tiktok, failing metaverse, privacy and political related scandals, and there you have it: a sinking ship

I posted this 2 weeks ago and got downvoted

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827148

Google layoffs incoming next

Hiring freeze includes hired employees still doing onboarding and going through the matching process. They were told they'll be given random tasks, whatever that means.

Perhaps Zuckerberg should be paid significantly less? Perhaps Facebook employees should fight back? Like protest or leak controversial information, especially since Facebook is in the data hoarding business?

But, stuff like this should make Facebook employees angry. Zuckerberg is not a person to envy.

Read this: https://www.velvetropes.com/backstage/mark-zuckerberg-house

Also, a few years ago Zuckerberg spent like $27 million for his own personal security in a 365 day period, which is obviously obscene.

Clearly he is a paranoid dude and certainly he keeps to himself.

But, he is a hardcore oligarch, that’s for sure.

If that grinds your gears check these out:

- https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/snapchat-evan-spieg...

- https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/finance/brian-armstrong-...

Also spent $20m+ for security during the pandemic/lockdown, which the company pays for, while all us plebs sat at home.

> But, stuff like this should make Facebook employees angry. Zuckerberg is not a person to envy.

It's a wonder he hasn't been pushed out yet. I'm pretty sure he's holding enough stock to prevent it from happening, but you have to wonder what kind of internal pressure there is in the Facebook C suite right now

It’s not just Meta, many other companies are on the hiring freeze. Probably the reason is not fulfilled Covid period bets on growth and expansion.

They announced a hiring freeze at least a couple of months back. Not sure why this is making the news now.

...working to “manage out people who aren't succeeding,”...?

Just say it, rather than use management speak!

Haven't they already been in a freeze since this spring? Or did they come out of it for a bit?

Well, guess that means the multi-year bugs in their API aren't getting fixed any time soon.

> In prior moves to reduce spending, a dual-camera watch the company was building to compete with the Apple Watch was shuttered.

loool

> Meta is not the only advertising company to be hit by broader economic challenges.

interesting they are referenced as advertising company..

Is it ?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/267031/facebooks-annual-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093781/distribution-of-...

Meta and Google are advertising companies, their "products" are just a way to:

- gather data: whatsapp/messenger, maps, youtube, "like"/"share" buttons, reviews &c.

- display ads: google search, youtube, instagram, fb feed

- display a "buy" button: google search, youtube, instagram

The only "new" products they don't shutdown after a year are products that allows them to gather more data / show more ads / get more "buy" clicks. Everything else get terminated no matter what

who would buy a facebook watch? lol

Right in the name: facebook "watch" -ing you

If only there was a way to save 10B operating expenses

The economy is going downhill from now

I wonder what freeze means in this context (paywalled so couldn't see if there was additional context) because I just received a third followup email from a recruiter at Meta..

I hope they don’t restructure the fact checking team. Who would protect us?

Every dumpster fire, no matter how intense it burns, eventually dies out.

Tech is reflexive. Since most tech/saas companies sell/support other saas companies, they all go down.

Think about all the startups who rely on AWS, Apple computers, and Facebook ads. What happens when they all die?

The tech bull run is over, and we'll find out where the bodies lie soon.

This is really hyperbolic. Facebook is not even closely comparable to those. Additionally, there's no market indication that won't be a need for services like AWS or hardware provided by Apple.

It's really weird how many people seem to _want_ the tech industry to just wither and die. It's unlikely and unrealistic. There may be a sharp correction, but it's unrealistic to think that the behemoths with a moat are going anywhere.

No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups), but a repricing for sure.

We don't even know the market demand for these products because cheap money has made everyone a startup founder, and every company pivoted to providing a "tech" solution when it might not have been economically viable or provided any profit.

> No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups)

You wrote: “Since most tech/saas companies sell/support other saas companies, they all go down.”

“Go down” presumably meaning stock goes down, not “goes bankrupt.”

AWS is healthy. Apple is effectively immortal, but will slowly commoditize (10+ yrs) from lack of innovation.

Meta/Goog are (eng staff wise) oversized for their output. Both of their leaderships aren't leading very well.

Despite the hype and capabilities offered, none of the big players have find ways to use their AI assets. That's a poor indicator of their future. You can almost smell the disruption coming..

good point, other than applications in adtech for google/fb the only big tech company that is actually doing something with their ML expertise is nvidia IMO

Where exactly do you advertise your blue collar business if not on a Meta or Google property?

They don’t sell tech. They use tech. They sell ads.

I do agree that the bull run for companies that sell tech will subside, maybe over correcting in the short term.

Oh no the market has corrected to 2019 levels because the ridiculous amount of free cash has stopped! Clearly the era of tech is over and we should all wrap up and go home.

I don't think there is anything substantial here to suggest this is anything other than a normal recession and even if this was like the dotcom bubble, these companies aren't like dotcom era startups. They're massive behemoths intertwined with the fabric of American society, not to mention their warchests make most other companies blush.

2005 was a pretty shitty time to be in software. I could do without another one of those. If we avoid that level of suck for another 10 years I can just take early retirement.

Tech is much more integral to our lives than ever. I think what we might see instead is earning decreasing to a certain extent though. Non-FAANG type of companies still need plenty of tech; and they tend to pay decent enough.

> I don't think there is anything substantial here to suggest this is anything other than a normal recession

Then I'm guessing you haven't been paying much attention to anything.

Have you seen what's happening in the bond market these days? Looked at the insane actions the BoE is taking coupled with their insane tax policy? Have you seen the rising dollar are you aware the threat that makes to the entire global credit system?

This is literally just getting started.

I don’t know that I’m particularly concerned about the UK causing a global economic crisis. I am aware of what’s happening with them, I’m currently vacationing in Ireland so it’s been on the news but I just don’t know that the UK will be anything to cause larger global consequence.

I was not aware of the US bond market crumbling, and having a quick read it doesn’t seem to be, it seems to be a consequence of the fed raising rates which will obviously not continue indefinitely.

To be honest it still seems like a normal recession but with a bunch of hyperbolic news headlines attached.

The downvote arrow as slowly become a "truths I don't want to hear" button on HN.

Too much cheap money and a grow at any costs mentality has lead to exactly this is problem where every tech company is very tightly coupled with every other tech company.

I'm in the B2B space for one of the many non-profitable, recently IPO'd companies. As far as companies goes, this one is pretty sane. Healthy growth, a product that makes sense, thoughtful leadership. However when I look at our customers the vast majority are small tech startups, many of which will obviously cease to exist in a down turn.

When I look at our spending, it's mostly to other larger tech companies, those big tech companies everyone wants to work for.

But those small startups, that have weird products that don't make sense, price sensitive customers, unsustainable growth and crazy leadership, they make up a huge amount of our revenue. When they start to collapse, we'll have to downsize, both in headcount and in services we pay for. And we won't be alone.

On top of that, I look at my own spending. My other tech friends and I have no problem paying what would have been crazy amounts for services like Door Dash, or a constant stream of slightly over price but so convenient stuff from Amazon. Why not subscribe to another streaming services, it's only $10/month. So many of these direct to consumer companies mostly exist because of highly paid techworkers that have more cash than they need.

I get laid off I'll just pick up my food myself, I'm not going to be ordering everything of Amazon, I'm cancelling all but my most active subscriptions.

There are a lot of positive feedbacks in the current tech ecosystem what will continue to be triggered and continue to bring down the massive, massive tech bubble we're in.

Granted, we will all have trim the fat moment but I doubt the level of doom and gloom is warranted, as we are not in a "massive, massive tech bubble". If anything, tech hasn't penetrated enough into our lives yet.

Most likely; these services will evolve into a format where it is financially more viable - which might even allow them to reach larger audiences.

Ideally, this should happen in a slow fashion (which it seems to be happening). A sudden crash would be more chaotic, but on the long term I doubt we have much to worry about as a sector; there'll still be plenty of jobs for tech workers.

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