Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports | Hacker News Reader

Meta in talks to reincorporate in Texas or another state, WSJ reports

reuters.com

129 pointsbelter171 comments

Not surprising, and I expect more of this in the decade to come. It feels like we’re finally seeing companies begin to draw lines in the sand on where their interests actually lay: power (which Texas grants in spades), profit (which Delaware has historically protected), or values (in which case they would incorporate/move to a place that aligns with said values - of which vanishingly few companies do).

If anything, it’s kinda…helpful? As a consumer, I mean. If I see a company moving from CA to TX, well, that’s probably for reasons I have issue with, and therefore make it easier for me to not do business with them going forward.

If companies want to advertise their actual values so openly by reincorporating in another state, well, more power to them I guess.

> profit (which Delaware has historically protected), or values (in which case they would incorporate/move to a place that aligns with said values - of which vanishingly few companies do).

Which values exactly are being expressed by being incorporated in, say, California?

I can totally see how companies that chafe at the requirements imposed on them by some of these high-government states would choose to leave so they can avoid filling said requirements, but what would a board meeting look like for a company that prides itself on values where they decide on CA?

"We really want to pay more taxes" doesn't seem likely—why not just allocate funds to a charity of your choice? "We need the government to tell us to treat our employees well" also seems unlikely—why not just do the right thing in any state?

What is the rational values-based reason for incorporating in CA? ("Sticking it to DE" isn't rational.)

> Which values exactly are being expressed by being incorporated in, say, California?

Depends on when. The whole point is that the incentives, and signal generated by responding to them, are changing a bunch.

Just my opinion, but between ~2008 and ~2016, incorporating in CA could at least potentially be read as "We're really serious about hiring the best talent and doing an unusually good job, to the point that we're willing to pay a premium."

Implied in the above is the idea that paying said premium would result in success that strongly outweighed the costs, and that you could more or less keep that success, without putting a huge target on ones back for additional taxation, regulation, social stigma, etc. California was highly regulated and expensive, but not quite punitively regulated and expensive.

Over time, that signal has weakened. The relationship between SV and CA feels more actively hostile. people do what everyone's doing, or really want to be near VCs and other network effects. These things have always been true, they've just lost the cover provided by that other more grand and inspiring explanation. despite the drawbacks I do think it's still the best place to start a very small tech startup. The pool of both talent and peer companies is completely unmatched, even in other large tech cities.

One thing that's hard to decouple: to what degree is this shift because of the regulatory and social environments becoming authentically hostile to tech (on many fronts: taxation, gentrification, looseness-for-speed, etc), and to what degree does it just seem that way to people that get some combination of cash and dopamine from shifting to see the world through that lens? IMO both things have certainly occurred, but I'm less sure of the proportions.

Edit — another thing that's very interesting to me: massive ideological decoupling in the C-suite vs IC classes. My experience during that time period felt much more "flat", both hierarchically and ideologically. I started out as a random intern and not only was it very easy to get in the room with some staggeringly rich and brilliant people, I genuinely felt a very strong and natural vibe-compatibility with them. They mostly seemed regular. Thiel was an exception, but only mildly. Intense vibes, but decent ones. I'd have guessed that as I aged out of my 20s and became more successful that I would, if anything, be better able to relate to some of those big dogs. Not the case at all. I think back then both classes were less aware that one was or was becoming an inhumane robber barron. Both sides know that now.

> between ~2008 and ~2016, incorporating in CA could at least potentially be read as "We're really serious about hiring the best talent and doing an unusually good job, to the point that we're willing to pay a premium."

This makes sense for putting a headquarters in California but doesn't explain incorporating there. For example, from TFA: Meta is thinking of moving their corporation from DE to somewhere else, but their headquarters was and will likely remain in CA.

I'm trying to figure out what values would be signaled by incorporating anywhere other than DE.

> This makes sense for putting a headquarters in California but doesn't explain incorporating there.

Good point. Agree that DE C corp has been the norm and expectation since forever. Doesn't look like CA is a mentioned contender, and my guess is that it is very much not in consideration, for all the above reasons.

In "TX and other states" I read "TX and other states that will lean towards relative deregulation in coming years". It's less about sticking it to DE, more about bribing TX or whoever into even more favorable terms than you're getting in DE, in a way that wins some 10+ year metagame.

Bezos did a classic version of this with HQ2 and DC

> I'm trying to figure out what values would be signaled by incorporating anywhere other than DE.

"I don't like that corporations can shop around for the best deal in governments, while an individual is stuck with using their physical location and must follow those laws and pay those taxes no matter where they work. Therefore, my company will be incorporated in the locality that it's main office is in, and we'll pay local taxes and follow local laws for our locations elsewhere, so as to support the people who make our products/services great."

Maybe if you are a non profit based in CA. There's probably some other corner cases I'm not aware of, like it might be simpler in some cases like an LLC for holding family property, etc.

There's definitely an "investor beware" signal here, especially with companies like Meta that have dual-class share structures (or Tesla, which Musk has unwarranted direct control over and which he has expressed his desire to convert it to a dual-class structure). Texas isn't exactly the extreme "YOLO your fiduciary duties" wild west that, say, Nevada is, but when a company signals that they don't want the stability, predictability, and extensive experience in business law that Delaware provides, you have to assume that it's not looking out for its shareholders' best interests.

Also, speaking of Musk, note that for all his fits of pique over losing in chancery court over his attempt to wriggle out of a terrible contract that he wrote (Twitter) and a pay package that was rubber-stamped by a conflicted-controller BoD, he also notched some notable wins on some non-slam-dunk cases there, such as upholding Tesla's acquisition of his cousins' failing company SolarCity.

> pay package that was rubber-stamped by a conflicted-controller BoD

Pay package was voted on by 75% shareholders, twice, so that's a gross misrepresentation of reality

No, it was voted on by 75% of shares. Musk alone is 12% of that.

> 72% of all votes cast (...), excluding votes of shares owned, directly or indirectly, by Messrs. Elon and Kimbal Musk.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465924...

That's still shares though, not people. Ok, we've excluded two large shareholders, but there are still plenty other large holders who are friends and associates of the board.

I'm not sure what your point even is.

Large shareholders have large shareholdings. They have a lot of skin in the game. They're going to vote according to what they think is best _for themselves_, not for Musk. You don't fool around when you have billions of dollars at stake.

Small shareholders who only own a couple of shares can afford to vote for fun because, at the end of the day, the outcome won't affect them much. And for fun they did vote, 90% in favor. [1] Their support was never really in question. The only doubt was whether the big institutional investors (BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.) would go along with it. Vanguard had actually originally voted against it in 2018, but supported it in 2024.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musks-...

This is a move from Delaware (not California) to Texas. It is probably more about shareholder rights and corporate governance, nothing to do with your standard political values.

The comment acknowledges this. As they say a move from Delaware to Texas signals something, it signals that the company goes not particularly care about shareholder protections or governance. It implies that the leadership of the company is more interested in not being constrained than in serving their shareholders.

Only if you assume that not being constrained is somehow a bad thing for shareholders, which apparently is a logical fallacy some believe true.

It’s less a value judgement than a fact of law. Delaware has strict rules, precedents and courts that enforce shareholder protections. By leaving Delaware the company has signaled that giving that up is less if a downside than whatever upside they are getting in the new jurisdiction.

In the case of Tesla it was an explicit repudiation of those rules that caused the company to leave, so it’s reasonable to see it as a signal.

Same point. Leaving a constrained environment for a less-constrained environment.

If shareholders don’t like this move, they are free to move on from their position. They are owed what they own, because of their belief in future profits. If shareholders think this move is detrimental to that, move on.

Like mentioned, Zuck owns the control. This isn’t a secret revealed to shareholders after they buy in to the gambit.

Thats not true. Shareholders have rights beyond future profits. Those rights are governed by the constraints of the environment, and are part and parcel to the ownership of the shares. Zuck has a large amount of control both because of his ownership percentage and the ownership structure, but even with that amount of control the rights of the shareholders are not something he can change unilaterally.

Changing the incorporation location is absolutely a change to the ownership introduced to the shareholders after they buy into the shares. This is basic property rights stuff, not some sort of fringe theory.

I'm sure people like Musk and Zuckerberg think they are gaining some sort of advantage, but the reality is they're mostly gaining a lot of uncertainty as to legal rulings and government intervention. Delaware is widely preferred for a reason.

What happened to Disney should be chilling, but maybe they've decided to go all in on the right and figure that will be favored.

Source WSJ article: https://www.wsj.com/tech/meta-incorporation-texas-delware-f0...

> Last year, Delaware’s legislature made it easier for big shareholders to use stockholder agreements to assume powers normally held by a company’s board. The Delaware Chancery Court also ruled in Meta’s favor in April, dismissing a case that argued the company had to consider societal impacts in addition to chasing profits.

I wonder if this is an attempt to disempower minority shareholders (i.e. anyone that isn't Zuck)?

Yes. He saw what happened to Musk.

Musk got told he was too greedy about his salary. Which he was.

without Musk there is no Tesla.

I know a PayPal employee who would get a vein on his forehead if you suggested Leon had anything to do with their success.

Whether it’s true or not another .1% of his net worth per year isn’t going to prove it.

> another .1% of his net worth per year isn’t going to prove it.

It was a 56 billion dollar pay package. That's substantial even for Elon.

Musk basically offered shareholders a deal that if he 10x ed the stock he gets 10% of that. The shareholders oked it twice but a judge in Delaware said lets block that. It wasn't really about greed.

I kinda feel in business if two parties make a deal and are happy with it then it's not really the job of the courts to prevent them.

what do you mean greedy? he made a deal and crushed the metrics necessary to hit that deal. without him there is no tesla.

I can't imagine what it's like at Meta right now, with the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers and then a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them.

Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him. If they were to quit there would be a line out the door to hand them as much money as they want to start a competing open research lab. I bet a ton of top researchers from other labs would be happy to join too, since from what I've heard from friends they're all miserable from dealing with incompetent management.

On current trajectory one of Sam Altman / Zuck / Elon will end up having full control over the frontier models that are trained on their huge new clusters. All 3 of them are unaccountable to anyone.

> a week later stating that the LLMs that his researchers / engineers are working on will soon be able to replace them.

This is a pessimistic interpretation of Mark's words that has been trumpeted in the media. Which I am appalled to admit.

He said that they anticipate the majority of new code to come from AI models rather than human engineers. He then adds that they expect developers to be augmented by these tools. Which tracks as you still need somebody to drive the AI and validate or correct their outputs.

https://youtu.be/7k1ehaE0bdU?t=2h8m6s

I'm talking about this: https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/DFNf73PJxOQ

> "...we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts".

What do you think will happen when these models are good enough to do 90% of engineering work? He's already putting a squeeze on his employees now (https://africa.businessinsider.com/news/meta-ceo-mark-zucker...)

> "I think whoever gets there first is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history," Zuckerberg said, according to the recording.

> Zuckerberg also reiterated his belief that this would be the year Meta started seeing AI agents take on work, including writing software. Asked whether this would lead to job cuts, Zuckerberg said it was "hard to know" and that while it may lead to some roles becoming redundant, it could lead to hiring more engineers who can harness artificial intelligence to be more productive.

> What do you think will happen when these models are good enough to do 90% of engineering work?

Honestly? I think we'll see a lot of vengeful and technically capable people who are out of work and who are looking to get revenge on the people that laid them off.

Some of those people who feel they have nothing to lose will build swarms of small drones that will use machine vision to track down Zuckerberg whoever they feel wronged them and kill them.

The future is going to be very, very spicy.

> He said that they anticipate the majority of new code to come from AI models rather than human engineers. He then adds that they expect developers to be augmented by these tools.

only 2 ways this can work:

1) Meta collectively generates 5x more code than it presently is capable of generating

2) Meta generates the same amount of code than it presently does, with fewer engineers since each engineer can (supposedly) generate 5x code

Unless Zuck announced some initiative that will require 5x more code than they currently can generate, you can be pretty sure the goal is #2.

The problem with #2 is Meta doesn't operate in a vacuum. Assuming there are problems to be solved, if Meta doesn't do #1 then someone else will. The someone else will eventually surpass Meta.

Surpass Meta in what? Meta’s revenue comes from social networks. Revenue doesn’t not increase with LOC. Writing 5x more code does not get you X billion users.

No company can rest on its laurels, even one the size of Meta. No one said LoC increases users or revenue, implementing ideas does though. If Meta decides to use the benefits of AI to keep the current productivity and cut staff instead of increasing productivity, they will eventually be displaced by a group that went the other way.

Competition means everyone is now 5X faster. So you can't get by with the previous output level.

> you still need somebody to drive the AI and validate or correct their outputs

100% visual inspection catches only about 80% of the defects.

The following is a classic example from QC circles (I used to run incoming QC at a medical device factory). Count the number of F’s in the paragraph below:

> THE NECESSITY OF TRAINING HANDS FOR FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FRIENDLY FARM LIVESTOCK IS FOREMOST IN THE MINDS OF FARM OWNERS. SINCE THE FOREFATHERS OF THE FARM OWNERS TRAINED THE FARM HANDS FOR THE FIRST-CLASS FARMS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM LIVESTOCK, THE OWNERS OF THE FARMS FEEL THEY SHOULD CARRY ON WITH THE FAMILY TRADITION OF TRAINING FARM HANDS IN THE FATHERLY HANDLING OF FARM STOCK BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE BASIS OF GOOD FUTURE FARMING.

How many did you get?

The correct answer is four dozen (I wanted to make the number harder to calculate before you count them).

Having software devs become some sort of QC inspectors for AI code sounds like a fucking nightmare to me, and I know how much of a nightmare QC in a factory is and how many defects escape both the design and the manufacturing process even with very strict QC.

> The correct answer is four dozen (I wanted to make the number harder to calculate before you count them).

No it isn't? I counted 34, and a python oneliner agrees.

Good job, I guess, I was doing that for the comment-bait to get people to count it, not with Python though (is a Python one-liner visual?). In any case, go read stuff from Deming and Juran and others in manufacturing quality, and you will still see that 100% inspection is not enough.

I'm not sure what's keeping LeCun at Meta at this point. I can imagine he's not happy with Zuck's capitulation. I'm sure you're right that if he decided to leave he'd easily be able to get funding. I'm sure France would be willing to set him up with an AI research lab to get him back there. And there would be plenty of other companies/labs that would be trying to get him.

Yeah he could easily get Hinton (who hates nothing more than Sam Altman) to endorse a new proper open AI lab, similar to what was described in the OpenAI Charter.

Karpathy, Alec Radford, and a ton of their old students are practically free agents right now who could probably be convinced to join.

There's probably even a chance of someone like Wojciech Zaremba leaving OpenAI to join them.

EU would build them CERN style compute clusters to train healthcare, education, climate, etc models.

I'm sure there's plenty of people at HuggingFace, Eluther, old Stability AI group who'd also love to get involved.

yes ... let's dream on ... until the new openAI becomes just like the old openAI again.

human nature will never change.

q: what is the definition of an optimist?

a: a person with no experience.

q; what is the definition of a pessimist?

a: an optimist with experience.

mine ;)

This type of idol worshipping has to stop. LeCun invented CNN but he also said world simulation using diffusion was a deadened, which has been proven very wrong. The money is better spent hiring new grads with open minds and something to prove.

He's a director not a "in the trenches" researcher anymore. He's being paid for being a highly technical leader who enables and recruits researchers he employs to do great work, similar to Oppenheimer in a way.

$META is hitting 700, and RSU refresher price for 2022 performance was ~110.

My bet, is Yann got a huge set of packages with the AI talent race, and what may have been a $10M/4yr package may now suddenly be 70M+.

Unlikely any other AI lab would be liquid like that.

Presumes he's a weird creature that is motivated by the number. Don't really need to care anymore if you've already got $10 million.

>I'm not sure what's keeping LeCun at Meta at this point.

Maybe he's happy with his compensation, his coworkers, the food at the cafeteria and doesn't want to uproot his life or be burdened with running a company.

>I can imagine he's not happy with Zuck's capitulation

Who did Zuck capitulate to?

I’d be pretty embarrassed to be working for someone who kissed the ring like Zuck did on Jan 20.

So kissing the ring and bending over was okay on Jan 20, 2021?

And it was already embarrassing for a myriad of reasons before that including how he went on Joe Rogan talking about how corporations need more "masculine energy". In the hobbies I participate in (notably I'm not in a major tech hub) some of these tech companies are getting a similar social stigma to like finance (and this is especially pronounced among women I know who really don't like what they view as "tech bros")

Indeed, I think the inauguration was kind of Zuck's "pedo guy" moment, where the pieces fell into place and a whole bunch of people at once were like... oh, yes, okay I see what is actually the state of things here.

Zucc has been kissing various unsavory rings for a long time, though. It's not like this just started. Didn't he ask China's President for the honor of naming his baby? [1] Totally shameless suck-up.

1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...

I've always thought that Zuck looked like a psychopath, even leaving aside his actions, many of which I have read about in the past.

you just have to take a look at his face, and those mad staring eyes.

>some of these tech companies are getting a similar social stigma to like finance

SV """tech""" companies have had this stigma since at least mid-2010s. Don't you remember the awfulness of Uber's CEO?

A lot of bros in tech delude themselves that they are the "in touch" ones and actually no, it's not chauvinism and misogyny it's just some "masculine energy" but it's always been lies.

It really shouldn't be this surprising that the same people who swear that there's nothing wrong with tech that results in it's INSANE gender ratios despite historical evidence that women love to code continue to ignore obvious signs of their bad behavior.

IDK, maybe it's proximity to hollywood and it's wealth of rich chauvinists and sex predators. Maybe california has something in the water that makes rich men act like sex predators. Or maybe they are a representative sample of male behavior when in positions of power over women in the USA and they just get outed more.

very, except that embarrassed is too weak a word.

> Who did Zuck capitulate to?

There's a pretty decent list of the actions and changes at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/technology/meta-mark-zuck....

> I'm sure France would be willing to set him up

Are you familiar with realities of incorporating a startup in the EU?

In the UK it costs £12 and takes 5 minutes. It costs between £300-600 per year for an accountant to file your accounts, and £12 for your confirmation statement.

And did when we were part of the EU.

Cheaper and quicker than America.

You don't incorporate in the EU, you incorporate in one of the 27 different countries.

All have wildly different requirements.

(These costs rocketed last year. Incorporation is now £50, and an electronic confirmation statement is £34.)

You also have all sorts of ancillary fees like the Information Commissioner’s annual charge.

UK was vastly different from the mainland EU. You're right that the EU is not singular, but once we start talking of Germany, the Netherlands, France, etc. - we quickly hit regulations that bear no resemblance to a free market and some of which are incompatible with IT business whatsoever.

I suspect France/EU would be willing to set him up in a government funded research lab - possibly they already have something going that they could put him in charge of. No issues with incorporation.

Sure, with roughly 50% taxes and a really dynamic free labour market.

Don't judge me, I'm living in the EU and I love the place, but regulations and business climate are definitely not great.

"I'm not sure what's keeping LeCun at Meta at this point."

The most obvious options are

1) An insane amount of compensation.

2) Access to an insane amount of compute to train new LLMs.

I've seen him on record that he'd pretty much work for whoever pays him (in the context of research grants for military). Virtue signaling to feel good is only worth so much to people. Humans compartmentalize very well.

This seems like a pretty widely shared ethos in today's software engineering culture. "I'd happily build the Torment Nexus if you pay me enough!" No ethical baseline below which we refuse to pass. Simply a required $$$:EVIL ratio.

It's not always like that. Most of the team would be hired to move protobufs around for the Torment Nexus so it seems quite innocuous.

Yea, I think this is how a lot of engineers rationalize it. "Well, I'm not directly participating in my company's A/B experiment to see what types of content drive children to suicidal ideation! I'm just moving data from the project's logging side of the stack to the metrics side of the stack so that reports can be generated. Don't blame me!"

It saddens me that taking an ethical stance is now derisively considered "virtue signaling".

I would never work at Meta, not because refusing to do so would make me feel good, but because working there would make me feel like I'm making the world a worse place.

The idea of having a moral compass is antagonistic to the worldview of a lot of people in tech, so they are instinctively dismissive or condescending to anyone who does.

I just finished a blog post with some thoughts on AI’s future [1] and the surprising conclusion was that most big tech companies probably have much bigger problems than whether researchers leave or not.

As Taleb and DeepSeek’s CEO point out, usually when you have a disruptive technology, then the incumbents will be left behind. Cursor AI and DeepSeek are a sign of new players coming out of nowhere and beating the incumbents.

[1]: https://huijzer.xyz/posts/ai-learning-rate/

>All 3 of them are unaccountable to anyone.

In what way are they unaccountable to anyone?

Their wealth is tied up in stock whose value is tied to the perception, aka the accountability, of the general public. Not being able to personally destroy someone's wealth because you don't like what they're doing is different from being unaccountable. If tomorrow Zuck released an AI model or FB feature that was deeply unpopular, his ventures and personal wealth would dwindle according to the market's reaction. That's accountability. I'm not even a fan of Zuck... he's a slimy weasel who changes his tune to whoever is in power. But public perception directly affects his decision making.

Zuck has majority voting shares, so can't be fired.

Sam already proved that nobody at OpenAI can get him out, and the new board makes that even harder.

Same for Elon.

No matter what happens, all 3 will be billionaires for the rest of their lives.

Nothing you said refuted the point made.

All talk of being about social change or diversity by large companies should now be exposed as purely performative. If you want to work at not just Meta but Google or Microsoft or Amazon because money is good, that's fine. We live in a society where you need money.

But you're fooling yourself if you think you're doing something good for society should've shattered long ago. All these big tech companies have done an immediate and total heel turn to get in line with the administration, which isn't even a partisan issue. The interests of large companies is aligned with US domestic and foreign policy.

Meta (etc) are now no different to Boeing, Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. You are working for a defense contractor.

Every day Zuck further exposes himself as being about his own class interest: that of the billionaire class. It's now OK to say that LGBTQ have "mental illness" on Meta platforms [1]. Meta already had a longstanding policy of censoring and downranking Palestine content [2].

It's also why the government was so keen to ban Tiktok: because it doesn't censor

[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-new-hate-spee...

[2]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-new-hate-spee...

>All talk of being about social change or diversity by large companies should now be exposed as purely performative

It was always understood as purely performative. You think Gay people actually thought Target cared about them? Do you think Trans people actually thought Budweiser was going to go out of their way to support the trans community just because they gave a trans person like $50k?

The only people who have ever insisted that corporate "we love the gays" was serious are the people who are yelling about how "woke" companies are. Except at the same time they will also yell about how it's just performative?

I can't help but feel what they were asking for was never genuine support of LGBTQ people either, since, uh, who they tend to vote for. Rather, their complaint seems to have come simply from any media, any images, any acknowledgement whatsoever that LGBTQ people are PEOPLE

It's weird. You either stay quiet or be loud and expect to be out of a job. The mindset is "will this help for PSC."

I'm not bothered by the free speech policy decisions or Trump political contributions. Especially in light of overreach by the Biden administration, allowing more speech is reasonable, and political contributions to the party in power area always reasonable.

What bothers me is dishonesty from leadership about cost cutting, refusing to answer hard questions at the Q&A, and short-sighted decisions causing a lot of churn. When Sheryl left, the adult in the room that would call out Zuck left. No one's there to tell Zuck that the gold chain and million dollar watch isn't a good look. And now Nick Clegg left and Dana White joined the board. I'm sure his UFC experience will prove indispensable.

Don't get me started on how much money is wasted on AR/VR.

If it weren't for juicy 2023 RSUs and the bad job market, there'd be a lot more turnover.

> the CEO publicly stating that they're firing the bottom 5% of performers

I understand that people don't like any talk about layoffs and performance management, but I've never worked at a company where being in the bottom 5-10% of performers meant your job was safe. I've also never worked at a big company that didn't have at least 1-in-20 people who were clearly underperforming and everyone around them knew it.

I know the real complain is that he said it out loud and people don't like threats. However, Meta employees are highly compensated, especially now that the stock price is extremely high. I don't really think it's unreasonable for a company that compensates well and has generous severance packages to be cutting the bottom 5% of their workforce.

The problem isn't that they are cutting 5%, it's that they use stack ranking. Within a team of 10, you may have the top 10 performers in the whole company, but the manager still has to rank them and assign at least one of them the bottom ranking, or engage in a lengthy battle to defend their high rankings.

They're not actually finding the bottom 5%, they're giving managers an excuse to get rid of people the don't like for whatever reason.

It's also terrible for morale to do it all at once. Sure, maybe there are some underperformers. Let managers deal with those people individually. Don't do a mass layoff where they have to select someone at a specific time when all their people might be doing well.

> They're not actually finding the bottom 5%, they're giving managers an excuse to get rid of people the don't like for whatever reason.

More insidious is the rankings are capricious and arbitrary despite haughty claims. Unless you're in the top quintile and know so explicitly you can never feel safe in your position. You can also drop into the bottom quintile of the stack for no other reason than someone else on your team self aggrandized a bit more right before reviews.

Vibes strike again.

Taking this to its eventual conclusion, wouldn't you just fire everyone?

Say you fire 5% now, then another 5%, and another, and so on. Obviously, you'll still hire, so you can argue that not everyone will be fired, but you could potentially just be firing/pushing out all the people you have today over the next X years to replace them with what you believed to be better employees. However, those newer employees are not the ones that got you to where you are today where you make so much money that you can liberally fire "the bottom 5%". It feels like a bit of a paradox.

At some point, it's worthwhile to step back and ask if maybe the system is broken. The constant hiring/culling cycle is ruthless way to wring out performance from people who are already likely overperforming in the industry.

>Taking this to its eventual conclusion, wouldn't you just fire everyone?

>Say you fire 5% now, then another 5%, and another, and so on.

sounds a bit like Zeno's paradox, or one of them.

> Zuck needs Yann LeCun and other senior researchers at Meta a lot more than they need him.

Of course not. Quantifiably so. Proof: he can get all of them for comparably measly salary to his net worth. He has.

(P.S. Besides, you'd be surprised how replaceable such people are. Often at these companies who can hire high quality talent at lower levels you are going to see impressive people step up when the old wash away, so it might actually be the opposite.)

Actually the top talent wants to work at a company that regularly fires the bottom performers

It's Jack Welch's rank and yank but this time with LLMs!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

I wonder if there are future plans to rank and yank LLMs, too. Or whether LLMs will exhibit "morale problems" because of it.

Seems like a lot of Californians are feeling insecure about this kind of news. Maybe its time to re-evaluate why this is happening instead of lashing out. California is a beautiful state with great weather, it has some of the most important trade and transit hubs in the west, and a robust education system. There's no reason we can't turn this around, almost all of our issues are governance related problems.

Meta isn't incorporated in California.

The angry people in the comments aren't from delaware.

It's a legal relocation, not a physical one.

Seems like there is a multi-industry push to move into Texas; came across a video the other day of Matthew McConaughey & Woody Harrelson (and other big name actors) reprising their True Detective role calling for the Texas legislature to increase incentives that bring Hollywood productions over to Texas.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/matthew...

[2] https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/matthew-mcconaughey-woody-h...

Why TF does everyone want to be in Texas heat or not be able to go outside?

They don't. They're currently incorporated in Delaware, but HQ is (and will remain, so far) in California.

> The paperwork change would not relocate its corporate headquarters. A Meta spokesperson said that it does not plan on shifting its corporate headquarters out of Menlo Park, California, but declined to comment on reincorporation when contacted by Reuters.

Cheap housing and permissive regulations

Engineers don’t seem to be taking the bait, and people are very reluctant to move away from basically the most perfect weather in the entire world almost year round.

When industries move away, taxes do as well. When the taxes go down, services and property values go down. Engineers may not want to give up perfect weather, but they still want to be employed, have their properties not depreciate and want good schools.

Eh, when somebody quits Meta in Texas and gets hit with a Non-Compete they're move real fast back to CA.

Eh, people will still move to California to start a business. When it gets threatened enough, it'll cave and play ball with other states to get back into the game. Having an insane upper hand with the climate based desirability will help them to get back on track, in my opinion. Now, I don't live in CA, and wouldn't want to move for some other reasons, but I genuinely don't think there is a better climate than SF, LA, SD metro areas. Maybe Cape Town, but then again, different problems.

Various pundits have been really pushing this "People are leaving California in droves!" narrative, desperately hoping that it one day becomes true. They need it to be true in order to repudiate all the various political Californisms that they disagree with. The reality is that California's population declined less than 1% in one year out of the last 125 and stood approximately steady in one year. It increased the remaining 123 years.

Yet, tax revenues are dropping everywhere. At a state level and at local levels.

You’re really underestimating how much people value the ability of just going outside at any point of the year without and physical annoyances. It’s hard to live anywhere else once you experience the life in that climate, and people won’t move out easy. Ok, I’m definitely overstating, and very biased, but still.

Industries aren't really moving though. The state a company is incorporated is generally orthogonal to where that company puts their HQ or hires most of their workers.

Maybe because it doesn't take 20 years to get a permit to build a treehouse. [0]

[0]: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/austin-ten-times-housin...

No state income tax.

Very business friendly, especially for the Good Ol' Boys club.

> No state income tax.

Property taxes are quite high in TX though. Even a conservative government has to fund itself somehow.

Yes, but a billionaire has a very small percentage of their net worth in personal real estate.

One aspect that intrigues me is it's well positioned to take advantage of solar power. I think solar capacity is growing faster than any state and it's behind only California now?

I live in Chicago and just got finished with a 10F degree week, and I was sitting there feeling bad about how much natural gas my house was burning to stay warm. There are plenty of weeks here, where I have to raise the temperature in the house 60F degrees, whereas the worst in Texas is probably only a difference of a few dozen, tops. On top of which, cooling like that is vastly more efficient than warming. Heat pumps are getting to be useable at these low temperatures, and somewhat more efficient than just burning the fuel, but not nearly as efficient at cooling from, say, 100 to 80.

But the biggest difference is that when climate control needs are the highest here, we have the least sun: in the winter, at night. Whereas in Texas when the climate needs are the highest (in the summer, in the daytime), they have the most sun. There's something sort of pleasing about that to me.

> Texas heat

In other words, as someone who's a solar power optimist, dealing with Chicago cold, I feel like that's not such a drawback.

Of course, somewhere sunny and comfortable like California might be best, but who can afford that.

In the cold, you can always put on more layers.... in the heat, you're basically sol

It's very libertarian. No taxes, few regulations. Some people die here and there from the lack of safety, but that's a sacrifice the government is willing to make.

This is a massive oversimplification. The taxes and regulations are simply handled at a lower level of government. If you've ever lived in a large Texas metro, you would know it's not the wild west it gets portrayed as. Lots of places that give off serious California NIMBY vibes and that are relatively expensive. The difference is that taxation and government services are typically handled via property tax and delivered locally instead of at the state level.

California and Texas have a lot more in common than people who've only lived in one or the other think. Texas just happens to be growing very quickly and is in some ways more geopolitically important at the moment (energy and exports and semiconductors and finance), which (besides less business regulation) is a big reason for the outflow from Cali and other states to Texas.

Why TF does everyone want to be in Texas heat or not be able to go outside?

Northwest Texas is almost southeast Colorado. Try to think beyond the stereotypes.

There are a lot of people in Texas and the biggest cities are quite close together. In fact, you can start in Dallas, drive down to Waco, drive down to Austin, drive down to San Antonio, and you've only driven four hours to do so. If ever there was untapped access to a huge workforce, it's in Texas.

Even better, Houston actually has the lowest homelessness rate of any major US city[0] and access to water. People are really sleeping on Houston's future right now.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/1dpg4he/did_you_kn...

Incorporating in Texas has nothing to do with having a big business presence in Texas.

Meta is almost certainly keeping their HQ and most of their operations in CA (and they weren't even incorporated in CA in the first place).

To any who are confused: Meta's HQ is in CA, but it is incorporated in Delaware. This is not referring to moving the HQ to TX but incorporation from DE to TX.

Is it a mental illness if a billionaire many times over still wants more money ?

Billions of dollars is beyond human comprehension. We handle it better with 1,000 millions. But then the human mind thinks about things on a scale of millions of dollars being a minute amount.... which is not how the general populations thinks about personal expenditures.

https://futurism.com/what-is-a-billion-2

The DSM definitions usually require some aspect of being made unhappy by your mental state. He seems pretty thrilled to be himself.

A disorder needs to interfere with regular functioning but does not need to make one unhappy. Someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder doesn't necessarily even recognize that they're causing havoc, much less feel bad about it.

Not if it’s narcissism or sociopathy.

Is that true of something like NPD also?

So why the ketamine?

Mo money = mo power. When you have that much money, you’re just competing with others with similar amount of money as you. So the only way you can outdo others is by having more power (which can come to you if you have more money).

It’s the billionaire equivalent of Florida retirement communities where people try to become the HOA presidents to exert more power.

Bertrand Russell would apparently say "no, that's just being human"

"All human activity is prompted by desire" --but read the rest, it's insightful even (especially) for today

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1950/russell/le...

We are all witnessing live via social media how ultra-wealth directly leads to mental illness.

I find it more likely that the cause and effect here are the other way around: people who are sociopaths tend to be more successful at becoming extremely wealthy and powerful.

I think there's some of that, but our current era - probably fueled by social media itself - seems to be producing something else entirely.

A lot of SV companies keep moving or talking about moving to Texas but is Texas really that billionaire friendly? Reuters says it is "perceived by some.." but is it?

Texas allows SpaceX to illegally disrupt 5 endangered wildlife reserves, ignore rocket launch regulations, and illegally block roads, so perhaps that is some of the appeal. Last year the Texas government decided they can do basically whatever they feel like without any checks to their authority in other regards, so if Greg Abbott is personally telling billionaires he will protect their interests, I honestly believe he would.

What do you mean by "illegally"? If the government allows SpaceX to block roads, then... SpaceX blocking roads is legal. What other definition of "legal road closure" is there?

There are limits to when and for how long you are allowed to close roads for specific purposes, just as there are limits to when and where you can launch rockets of specific sizes. SpaceX ignored the rules, and nobody enforces them despite the protests from residents of Boca Chica. Obviously the Texas government agrees with you that the law is whatever they choose to enforce, but there are still written rules.

And if the laws are on the books, it makes legal action against the state - as well as the offender - likelier and more remunerative.

One would think, but the FAA consistently failed to do much more than submit letters to SpaceX, which resulted in the FAA themselves being investigated. I don't think much ever came out of that. Only in the past year has the FAA been actively concerned about whatever SpaceX does, and coincidentally, Elon Musk demanded the FAA administrator resign, who promptly did.

What's up with the residents of Boca Chica? I know suing a company like SpaceX is expensive, but I'd be surprised if they couldn't band together to cover costs, or find some legal team at a rights org to take it on for cheap or on contingency.

They could also sue the local and state government to try to force them to enforce the laws on the books.

What SpaceX is doing is more important than Boca Chica

I'd be interested in reading about the legal limits to road closures, and reading about how they apply to the government and not just to private enterprises — since it's not in fact SpaceX closing the roads, but actually the Texas courts ordering road closures (for safety purposes around SpaceX launch sites). I haven't seen evidence that SpaceX is actually breaking any laws here.

don't know the specifics of this situation, but in general it's common for governments to simply not enforce laws making actions illegal but tolerated.

Something can be illegal but not actively enforced.

The basic premise of your post seems to be that the government has unrestricted power and cannot do (or allow to be done by proxy) anything illegal, but that isn’t true.

There’s several hundred years of legal history of state and federal governments being taken to court and made to stop or undo actions deemed to violate the law.

I see a lot of this sentiment around from tech people, and the underlying assumption is usually "if the government does it, it must be legal" and that is a really dangerous deductive baseline to operate from, regardless of your politics.

Just because a law is unenforced (selectively or not) doesn't mean the actions that law describes are suddenly legal. Texas is not enforcing laws with respect to SpaceX and others, but the laws are still on the books, usually to enable selective enforcement against undesirable entities.

> What other definition of "legal road closure" is there?

Usually "legal" means "following the laws", not "someone high up told me it was cool".

The law defines what is legal, not the enforcement of the law.

>the government

"The government" isn't a single unified entity. Texas has a long history of playing bullshit games saying "We can do this" and the feds saying "no you can't" and the courts have to solve it.

Texas insists that they have a legal right to secede. Any honest constitutional lawyer, and several founding fathers have addressed that point directly. There is no legal methodology within the context of the US system for any state anywhere to secede.

Dude have a sense of perspective. It's like 20 acres arguably degraded. Louisiana melts that much coastline into the Gulf of [Whatever] every ~hour~[1].

In exchange for being the world leader in spaceflight.

There aren't like, vast stretches of unprotected coastline they can pick from. It's ALL either protected or densely populated. If you want ANY spaceflight, you have to give somewhere, and this is essentially the only place in the continental US that works. If you say "not good enough" for Boca Chica, you're saying "no rockets can be developed in the continental US". Just be honest.

[1] Edit: day

> Louisiana melts that much coastline (20 acres) into the Gulf of [Whatever] every hour.

From [0], "The coast here loses a football field of land every 90 minutes." An American football field is about 111% of an acre[1] which means, unless there's been a radical spike since 2021, you're off by ~19.2 acres or ~17.3 football fields an hour (if my calculation hasn't gone wrong.)

[0] https://earth.org/data_visualization/louisiana-shrinking-coa...

[1] https://huffsports.com/football/how-many-football-fields-in-...

OK. Sure. Louisiana melts that much coastline into the Gulf every day.

I don't think this changes my thesis.

"$X is worse than $Y so we shouldn't bother trying to fix $Y."

Invalid logic, pleas try again.

It's more about the business environment.

California has, sadly, gotten increasingly punitive on business activity beyond the remit of what one would consider "standard". Such as legally mandating the sexual, ethnic, and gender composition of boards (e.g. SB 826 and AB 979), conditioning permits on companies committing to community benefit agreements that go beyond the direct impacts of the business (e.g. funding art non-profits), increased regulatory scrutiny on companies following activities outside of California that the government disagrees with, and other such things.

Individually, they're manageable burdens, but cumulatively it can get to a point where a business struggles to effectively operate as a market entity nationwide. Particularly for companies that are controversial.

But this is about where the company is incorporated (Delaware), not about where it's headquartered. The article mentions that Meta headquarters is staying in California (at least, for now).

Step 1 in get incorporated elsewhere. Step 2 is find political support to build an HQ (read financial incentives). Step 3 is move the HQ.

You don't need to be incorporated in Texas to move the actual facilities there, so why is that step 1?

I didn’t say you need to follow the steps. But this is the standard playbook for Billionaires seeking political favors and tax incentives.

Incorporating somewhere can get you political favor, which in turn can get you tax incentives. If you’re planning to move your Hq (which is a multi year long effort), it definitely helps if you have the first two steps lined up.

They could move the HQ without changing where they are incorporated. They also don’t need political support. It’s not a democracy. There are no steps.

Except for the Board thing you've just described Texas...

And in Texas if you disagree with the governor he'll send police to your business and threaten to imprison you.

I'd rather have burdensome regulation than a gun in my face.

incorporating in TX is not the same as moving to TX

Meta is incorporated in DE -- how many employees do you think it has in DE?

Meta isn't moving to Texas. They're just planning on reincorporating there (moving from Delaware).

I really don't see or hear much of any SV companies actually talking about moving their HQ or (critically) workforce to Texas. Certainly it has happened, but this narrative that everyone is leaving California is alarmist nonsense.

"When everyone around you is douching, better get back to basics and douche" - The Douche.

Good for billionaires, and shareholders, capitalists. Bad for labor. Texas is going down the shitter. Local infrastructure is outdated, emergency systems stretched, minimal to no foresight in weatherization of critical systems such as power grid.

Any time it gets below freezing, anxiety shoots through the roof because 2021 was a real fucking disaster. The TX grid is a joke.

Let’s not forget how the state leaders bend to the GOP and use our tax dollars for political stunts (useless border walls used for photo ops, bussing migrants long distances for political theater, sending state guard to border to “protect” border and delay transportation of perishable goods).

I feel bad for people moving here under the allure of “cheap housing”.

- strong climate change denial here due to state leaders being O&G industry puppets

- anti-abortion

- anti-progressive

I can’t wait to leave this shithole.

fuck off we're full

"Year of Efficiency" -> "Year of Intensity" -> "Year of slavery"?

I'm wondering if the real slaves of today had access to the internet if they would object to you diminishing their situation

Of course I’m not comparing Meta employees to slaves, but with a finite level of stretch, I can see a path where CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk might eventually say things like, ‘Companies need more slavery energy’ or ‘Make America great again—back to pre-emancipation efficiency levels.’"

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