'Thousands' at Meta face layoffs this week Meta Platforms, parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, architect of a metaverse, aggregator of eyeballs, is said to be preparing to layoff employees again. According to a report from Bloomberg, Meta intends to part ways with "thousands of employees" as soon as this week. The report suggests Meta executives are working on …
Flunky: Excuse me, sir, the council is worried about the employees acting up, demanding work from home, benefits, work-life balance, they wonder if it were possible to fire 500,000; I thought maybe from one of the big tech companies, where everyone would notice, as a warning, like one of the social media companies?"
Zorgerberg: Fire one million.
Flunky: But, five ... hundred ..... thou..... sand
Zorgerberg: <glares>
Flunky: One million. Fine, sir. Sorry to have disturbed you
(Big brother icon is the closest I could find to Zorgerberg's glare)
Mass layoffs are never fun (been there, done that), and I hope all the laid off staff find rewarding alternative work.
But, at least Mark Zuckerberg treats the process with a certain amount of decorum (i.e. at least telling employees about it and not slagging them off on his own social media channel, not mentioning any names).
Well, the positive side of this is that the US government now doesn't have to worry about putting caps on H1B hiring, and the airlines will be making bags of gold from flights from Bay Area back to southeast asia.
On the negative side, Mark now still can't afford to buy Hawaii.
I've heard of firms who go on a hiring spree, giving jobs to highly skilled people, as a way of preventing such qualified workers joining a competitor company...even if the posts these workers then get given are woefully inferior to said workers capabilities.
So, it seems that this "follow thy leader" approach might also apply when companies need to become more "efficient" - and to then brag about how many employees they fired...
Perhaps El Reg needs to create some more numerical equivalent "terms" related to the hiring and firing of staff?:
An AmazSacking would be 18,000
A GoogSacking would be 12,000
A MicroSacking would be 10,000
A DellSacking would be 6,600
An IBMSacking would be 3,900
A TwitSacking would be 3,700
A YahooSacking would be 1,600
If I was Zuck, I'd be throwing those thousands of employees on a project to integrate the fast interactive pop-culture time-sucking allure of Twitter into Facebook. It's not a good fit for Facebook's tech or UX (they tried) but a few thousand people might figure it out before the real Twitter is gone. If Facebook doesn't, another company will. Make it 3D if you please.
I only see a single advertisement on Twitter, repeating over and over like infinite scroll is looping. Time is running short.
This one time I found an iPhone 4 in the electronics recycling bin they used to have at Staples, so I snagged it.
But then! It was account locked. However, the owner thoughtfully put their personal details under the “Medical ID” portion of the emergency dial function. All I got out of it was their Facebook info, but it was enough to hound and pester them into dropping their iPhone 4 off their iAccount.
… and that’s how I got a free iPhone 4 to turn into my downstairs AirPlay receiver!
It is very nice of Stanford professor Jeffery Pfeffer to take up the cause of an obligation to the health and welfare of workers.
Surely the fine professor knows that in the USA, the only obligation is to the wealth of the shareholders.
In this case, where it appears Facebook's 3d fantasies are beating the drum of the death march, they only have a few choices.
Abandon metaverse, or cut liabilities.
Has there ever been a popular activity that requires wearing *disco-bondage headgear* ( to quote the late, great, Johnny Fever) ?
Ok, skiing, snorkling, motorcycling, racing, ... -- but in all those cases, the headgear is necessary for one of safety, survival, comfort or screening bugs.
They're doing it because the shareholders think cutting costs will increase the EPS / dividend / EBITDA / other shareholder-y BS. The shareholders "have a doody" (they're American you know) to their funds to "maximise returns" although they don't know how many of their shareholders they are trying to get fired right now, nor do they "have a doody" (they're still American at this point, even though their allegiance is to the dollar not the flag) not to put a burden on the state by dumping loads of people into economic peril or disaster (which - even in the US of A costs the taxpayers actual money)*.
*these shareholders are not taxpayers in any significant way of course. If they were they'd be more careful, but not paying tax is "cost cutting" in the same way as firing tens of thousands of people is.
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