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).

> pointed at internal gatekeepers who mainly seem to say no to product releases.

I've never observed facebook to be conservative about shipping broken or harmful products, the releases must be pretty bad if internal stakeholders are pushing back. I'm sure there will be no harmful consequences from leadership ignoring these internal warnings.

When I worked there (7 years), the gatekeeper effect was real. It didn’t stop broken or harmful, but it did stop revenue neutral or revenue negative. Even if we had proven the product was positive to user wellbeing or brand-favorability.

Yes I’m still bitter.

Why would a business release a revenue negative product? Stopping engineers from making products that dont contribute to the bottom line is exactly what these gatekeepers should be doing