If meta needs to lay off tens of thousands of people to make their financials look good enough to appeal to investors, that suggests to a layman like me that they weren't turning enough profit per employee to justify the things those people are working on. This comes, notably, after raising $10B last year before the layoffs.

So besides stock buybacks, what does it actually mean "to build a more traditional balance sheet and fund some expensive initiatives"? Layoffs mean they're doing less (far less!). Are they gonna hire people back? Like, what are you funding if it's not the people doing the initiatives?

And a follow-up question: given the above, who exactly is buying these bonds? "We grew too fast and did too many things so we fired people. Now our numbers look good! Give us money like last year to hire people to do things!" sounds like Lucy encouraging Charlie Brown to kick the football, no?