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Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

(www.theverge.com)
492 points Lionga | 4 comments | 22 Oct 25 16:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ceejayoz ◴[22 Oct 25 17:14 UTC] No.45672187[source]▶
Because the AI works so well, or because it doesn't?

> ”By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang writes in a memo seen by Axios.

That's kinda wild. I'm kinda shocked they put it in writing.

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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[22 Oct 25 17:30 UTC] No.45672398[source]▶
Why do you think it's wild? I've seen that dynamic before (i.e. too many cooks in the kitchen) and this seems like an honest assessment.
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1. stefan_ ◴[22 Oct 25 17:40 UTC] No.45672543[source]▶
It's a meaningless nonsense tautology? Is that the level of leadership there?

Maybe they should reduce it all to Wang, he can make all decisions with the impact and scope he is truly capable of.

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2. mangamadaiyan ◴[22 Oct 25 18:00 UTC] No.45672839[source]▶
... and bear more load as well.
3. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[23 Oct 25 03:03 UTC] No.45677750[source]▶
> It's a meaningless nonsense tautology? Is that the level of leadership there?

I don't understand why everyone always likes to bitch about why their preferred wordsmithed version of a layoff announcement didn't make it in. Layoffs suck, no question, but the complaining that leadership didn't use the right words to do this generally shitty thing is pointless IMO. The words don't really matter much at that point anyway, only the actions (e.g. severance or real possibility of joining another team).

My read of the announcement is basically saying they over-hired and had too many people causing a net hit to forward progress. Yeah, that sucks, but I don't find anything shocking or particularly poorly handled there.

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4. tomnipotent ◴[23 Oct 25 03:41 UTC] No.45677937[source]▶
There's a segment of people convinced that leadership must somehow be able to perfectly predict the future or they're incompetent losers, like running a business is somehow the easy part of capitalism.