Meta is axing 600 roles across its AI division

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.

I'm seeing a lot of frustration at the leadership level about product velocity- and much of the frustration is pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases.

My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". There are definitely limits on this, but it's been helpful when dealing with various internal negotiations. I don't spend as much time looking to "align with stakeholders", I just go ahead and do things my decades of experience have taught me are the right paths (while also using my experience to know when I can't just push things through).

> My leadership is currently promoting "better to ask forgiveness", or put another way: "a bias towards action". ... I don't spend as much time looking to "align with stakeholders"...

Isn't that "move fast and break things" by another name?

it's more "move fast on a good foundation, rarely breaking things, and having a good team that can fix problems when they inevitably arise".

That's not what move fast in a large org looks like in practice.

Sometimes moving fast in a large org boils down to finding a succinct way to tell the lawyer "I understand what you're saying, but that's not consistent with my understanding of the legality of the issue, so I will proceed with my work. If you want to block my process, the escalation path is through my manager."

(I have more than once had to explain to a lawyer that their understanding was wrong, and they were imposing unnecessary extra practice)

Raises the question though, why is the lawyer talking to you in the first place, and not your manager?

Isn't that the point of these layoffs? Less obfuscation and games of telephone? The more layers introduces inherent lag.

The real question is, how/why did they over-hire in the first place?

> The real question is, how/why did they over-hire in the first place place

This question has been answered many times. Time to move on and fix forward.