Why Mark Zuckerberg had to announce 11,000 job cuts at Meta

> Like many of its competitors, it believed the rise in online activity during the coronavirus pandemic was a permanent shift

not at all! they, like many of its competitors, simply made the correct strategic investments in themselves, at the time. growth is valued and so you lean in to it. if you don’t, you’ll suffer as your competitors take market share from you. you almost have no choice. (just as how in the startup world, VCs distort the market for would be sustainable bootstrappers.)

and why not? there aren’t any negative consequences with a non unionized, at will workforce. layoffs are just a thing. labor is there, almost by definition, to be exploited. labor writ large aren’t the same as people, to be cared for and respected with harsh consequences to be hedged or mitigated against.

so it’s not that they, or any of their competitors, “believed” in any tectonic shift, ie made an error in judgment. it’s that the very system they operate in practically demands such behavior.

the investment in VR OTOH is where the strategic genius or folly lies. we won’t know which for awhile yet.

I think there’s fair reason to believe that VR is compelling, simply from personal experience the imagination runs wild the first time you try the quest or similar. Not sure why there’s so much confusion about the promise of meta vr. I cannot imagine a future where desk based workers aren’t using VR.

Should have licensed The Sims 4 and sold add ons.