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Comment by assttoasstmgr | Hacker News Reader

You can't keep paying new college hires > $150k/year with zero experience and not assume the money won't run out some day. That bubble had a slow leak and now they've finally run out of oxygen. I'm surprised it took this long. Zuck losing his goddamn mind with this metaverse nonsense didn't help matters.

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I don’t get why people keep saying this, it’s like they want companies to pay employees less. No one goes around saying “Investment Banking, now that’s a bubble, no way they can keep paying their employees that much!” (Goldman Sachs revenue / employee over $1.1 million) Presumably the person commenting on HN is in fact an employee and not like Mark Zuckerberg in disguise, though I guess it would make more sense if the people saying this were startup founders angry at having to compete for talent a FAANG wage levels.

>“Investment Banking, now that’s a bubble, no way they can keep paying their employees that much!

For what it's worth, and from the other side of the pond, it looks like IB has been on a rediscovery journey since the late 2000s financial crisis.

First of all the likes of GS are not regarded anymore as the next coming of the Messiah when it comes to holding a job, or at least that was the general feeling around 2006-2008, even going into the financial crisis years. And second, some formally big IBs are actually on the extinction path, I'm thinking mostly about Credit Suisse's IB division and if I'm not mistaken Deutsche is in the same situation.

Credit Suisse seems not to be doing great lately, after a few years of scandals.

Metaverse might have been a clever scam to prop up stock value. It was obvious to everyone that Facebook (the website/app) is a mature business with limited growth potential, so Zuck had to throw a new bone to clueless investors (who, in the age of zero interest rates, were throwing insane amounts of money on anything with a theoretical potential to go big) in order to keep the exponential growth of stock value. In that light, spending a couple billions a year on it doesn't sound too bad. Btw now that zero interest rates are over, this whole sharade makes way less sense. I wonder if there'll be massive cuts to the VR division.

*charade

(yes, weird spelling)

It’s Frensh

They were talking about tricks to prop up the value of Meta's shares, so it could have been an intentional pun.

Fair point.

Apple has invested billions in AR/VR and is building a headset.

And almost every crazy bet they've made in the last few decades has paid off e.g. AirPods, Watch.

Apple is a proven product innovator. "Meta" is just the same old PHP website it's been since 2005, only with some acquisitions and low-value in-house stuff tacked on.

Jobs was a proven product innovator. What did Apple innovate in periods when Jobs wasn't at the helm? Apple Watch?

Apple watch is great.. I mean I never really wore watches consistently until I got one especially with the smartphone as I never needed to just check the date and time on a watch anymore.

So headphones and watches are "crazy bets" now. Good lord.

Apple is kind of a similar story. They've moved from being a high-growth, tech-based stock, into a stable, brand-based stock a couple years ago - about the time when Warren Buffet spotted it and added them to his portfolio. Perhaps they're also looking for a chance to catch some second wind.

Apple is easily on their 3rd or 4th wind. The Apple II debuted in 1979 was hugely successful in try 80s and early 90s. They lost their way in the 90s until the iPod pretty much saved them. The iPhone was their greatest achievement and made them the valuable company they are today. They’ve had many winds and innovated over decades.

> Metaverse might have been a clever scam to prop up stock value.

Did that even work though? I know that when I heard about that, it immediately made me discount Facebook's job offer (I was interviewing at the time).

> You can't keep paying new college hires > $150k/year with zero experience and not assume the money won't run out some day.

Actually, you can when you make an average of $1.2 million/employee/year in revenue. And an average of $300,000/employee/year in profit.

> That bubble had a slow leak and now they've finally run out of oxygen.

You seem to be confusing Facebook with a no-profits-in-the-history-of-ever unicorn.

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