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> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat co

• notacoward 4y ago
  I get 37% based on what it was when I started in 2017, and that's net over attrition during the same time. Absolutely crazy. They need to not only clear out some deadwood but also change their engineering/evaluation practices so they don't have 10K engineers working on projects that only exist because of NIH syndrome and/or impact whoring.
• foobarian 4y ago
  And they don't even create (and then quickly retire) random new product. Do they? What would be Meta's equivalent of Stadia?
  • typeofhuman 4y ago
    Oculus
    • polyomino 4y ago
      Oculus is a much bigger investment than Stadia
      • wlesieutre 4y ago
        And Facebook didn't create it either
        • arbitrary_name 4y ago
          Nor did they retire it, they rebranded it.
  • cl0ckt0wer 4y ago
    IGTV https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/5/22710638/instagram-tv-igtv-rebrand-video-formats-tiktok-reels https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/5/22710638/instagram-tv-igt...
• thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  > It's a sign of mismanagement and especially loss of focus. I think it's a natural symptom of running a company built on exploiting people's desire to craft and control their own image. It's corporate narcissism. Zuckerberg has been invincible for so long, how could he not be consumed by the reality distortion field himself?
  • defterGoose 4y ago
    Ooh, careful saying anything negative about social media or tech companies here. /s
    • int_19h 4y ago
      That's one of the easiest way to get upvoted here, especially wrt Meta.
• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  See also: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/09/28/meta-ordered-to-pay-175m-after-copying-green-beret-veterans-tech/ https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/09/28/meta-ordered-t...
• gwbas1c 4y ago
  > The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. You might enjoy reading "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail", https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-ebook/dp/B0881Y73YG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+changing+world+order&qid=1664484094&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjc5IiwicXNhIjoiMS4yNiIsInFzcCI6IjEuNDgifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-... (The author is Ray Dalio, one of the US's best institutional investors.) The big question is, when are we going to hit bottom? We need to make it through the Ukraine and Taiwan situations before things really bounce back.
  • UncleOxidant 4y ago
    > and Taiwan situations Let's hope we don't get a Taiwan situation on top of all of the other stuff that's going on. That way lies WWIII.
    • ethbr0 4y ago
      I expect that's the real reason for the US and Europe's "all-in" hardline over Ukraine: signalling to China about Taiwan. Because pursuing a similar strategy with China would be substantially more expensive, in terms of treasure and blood, for both sides. But the critical date there seems to be 2030-2035 based on military preparations.
      • dougmwne 4y ago
        Absolutely. The entire thing is absolutely about China. Russia is a broken country that would have no significance beyond its hydrocarbons and nukes. China is an economic superpower and growing world power. Very soon it could replace the US as the primary driver of globalism. If the west had shown itself as disunited, it would have been time for China to take center stage in world affairs for the next hundred years. Instead it will wait for another generation.
        • eloff 4y ago
• beambot 4y ago
  A little dated [2018], but still rings true: The average tenure for engineers at many major tech companies is ~3 years. Thus, you'd expect new hires at a rate of 30% annually just to maintain staffing levels. To determine headcount growth you, should look at year-over-year changes in total employee count, not just the number of new hires. TLDR: Meta's new-hire rate is not atypical. https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-retention-at-top-tech-companies-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-rete...
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    In fact, the overall head count has been rising rapidly. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-facebook-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-faceboo...
  • tclancy 4y ago
    Based on my limited observations having been in a similar situation for a year, I would guess the average tenure is Equity Award Years less percentage of people who get fired in less than the value of Equity Award Years. It’s a good way to keep reinventing wheels.
  • brilee 4y ago
    3 years is deceptive - in an exponentially growing company, the majority of employees are fresh, pushing the average tenure low. The relevant number is "length of tenure at time of severance", which I believe skews much higher. Any company seeing 30% churn is having a bad, bad time.
    • dadoge 4y ago
      “Length of tenure at time of severance” That is such a better metric, why is this not used more often
      • naniwaduni 4y ago
        It has its own almost-opposite problem in only counting employees who did leave.
• itsoktocry 4y ago
  >*The economy is stabilizing.* The economy is never "stable". It is constantly in a cycle of ups and downs, over-investment and under-investment, easy money and tight money... The current state is no more "normal" than any other period.
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    Zero is a special value you know, since zero times anything is zero. Edit: Except infinity ...
    • bjornsing 4y ago
      In the limit 0*x tends to zero as x tends to infinity.
    • lavp 4y ago
      An infinite amount of nothing is still nothing.
      • rightbyte 4y ago
        According to my limited understanding it is NaN.
  • mym1990 4y ago
    The economy most definitely experiences stability when people and business are able to have a reasonable amount of confidence that things don't hit the fan at any second now. This stability allows people to invest with more freedom, take more risk, and grow at a stable rate. Of course this behavior eventually overheats...but in terms of expectations there is definitely a stable state to an economy, even if it only last a few years.
  • SantalBlush 4y ago
    >The economy is never "stable". It is constantly in a cycle of ups and downs, over-investment and under-investment, easy money and tight money... That's pedantic and beside the point. The question is whether the economy experiences periods of relative stability. The answer is yes.
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  > The economy is stabilizing. The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed tightening since at least the 1980s. If you know where that will end up, congrats. For the rest of us, it's very much uncharted waters.
  • Rapzid 4y ago
    That's what I'm hearing; we didn't dodge a recession it just hasn't started yet. In TX energy prices are already up a lot this year. We generate a substantial percentage of electricity from natural gas, and exports are up for obvious reasons. Winter is coming.
    • scottLobster 4y ago
      Thanks to the shale boom natural gas has been effectively free in the US (as a byproduct of shale oil production) for the last few years. For various reasons the boom has reverted to the mean (although shale is still very much around), and as a result natural gas in the US has gone from "free" to "not free". Prices will go up, but we'll be fine. We still literally have more gas than we know what to do with. It's the Europeans and East Asians who are being royally screwed by gas prices at the moment, and that pressure isn't likely to cease anytime soon, particularly with the destruction of Nordstream.
      • Rapzid 4y ago
        I'm not sure historical natural gas prices support this idea of "free". Would need to crunch the numbers but at a glance the price came down about 50% in the 2010s from the aughts. It's had a few big, temporary dips most recently during the start of the pandemic in 2020. It certainly wasn't "free" in Feb 2021. We have about a 3% hike on our bills now to pay down the record profits gas producers received. My bill last cycle was 20% higher than last year with near identical usage. UK has already seen incredible energy cost increases. European winter is going to drive energy prices even higher. Yeah, "we" will be fine because computers. But lower income families are getting hit hard with this and inflation. Even still there is the Applebee's effect; people with money are paying more attention to those commercials because a lunch for two is pushing past 50$ dollars these days! That's gonna dry up investment even more. In the UK Liz Truss comes in and immediately commits political suicide with these tax cuts. Putting aside critiques aimed at trickle down economics, the timing is TERRIBLE. Startups are laying off because investment is drying up; tax cuts on high earners are going into savings and low-risk market investments. All this combined is, IMHO, going to lead to a massive global recession.
• UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no dividend be valued accordingly. Agree with the latter part of your statement, but no way have we hit "stability". Yes, taking away the ultra-loose money policy had to happen, but doing so has perturbed the system and it's going to take a while to stabilize.
• motbus3 4y ago
  I agree with you. But I also think this companies have potential for earning money. Real money. FB has incredible aí models and platforms as well as interesting hw products. But they keep pushing publicity for creepy projects such as their second life version. So what happens is that they have tons of fantastic things they do not properly use. I also think that media has chosen Zuckerberg to hit. Yeah. Lots of contradictions etc, but if anything, he is not stupid.
  • tsimionescu 4y ago
    > Lots of contradictions etc, but if anything, he is not stupid. What makes you think that? Especially after just pointing out that the strategy he himself has put front and center as the present and future of Facebook (Meta) is "creepy", when you think they have other things that could generate money?
• colinmhayes 4y ago
  > which offers no dividend be valued accordingly. FWIW Meta has apparently done $15 billion in buybacks this year which gives them a 4% yield at current cap. Investors generally prefer buybacks to dividends because of tax advantages, so this should actually have helped their stock more than a 4% div yield would.
  • adam_arthur 4y ago
    A 4% yield is not very good when you can buy risk free treasuries yielding more. Meta's shares outstanding have barely changed over time. Issuing equity to employees dilutes share count, buybacks counter this somewhat. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platforms/shares-outstanding https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform... At current valuation multiples buybacks are pretty smart for Meta, but many of these companies were doing buybacks at 3% yield valuations
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      Very few s&p companies are hitting 4% yields on their dividends/buybacks. Meta shares outstanding are down more than 3% since last year.
      • adam_arthur 4y ago
        Dividend is different than a buyback. Buying back at a 3% earnings multiple is not equivalent to a 3% dividend. It's much worse for shareholders. The company is investing in something that yields below the risk free rate of return. Put another way, if they gave that same money back to shareholders via a distribution, the shareholders could earn more buying US treasuries with that distribution. Buybacks are largely motivated by execs using company funds to increase their compensation, even if ROI is poor on the buyback. Otherwise they would never buyback at such low yields. Dividends don't go to option/RSU holders. But anyway, a buyback at 10% earnings yield like Meta has, roughly, is a good use of funds
        • colinmhayes 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• deepGem 4y ago
  Going by the current inflation and unemployment trends, the economy won't stabilize for a year at the very least. We have a very difficult situation. Inflation is high, unemployment is low. In 2008, we had low inflation and high unemployment, but not this time. So, with the tightening of interest rates, unemployment has to go high. With unemployment increasing, prices of goods will fall due to decrease in demand. At that time, hopefully inflation will go on a downward trend. The expected inflation in US is around 2-3% and until we see inflation heading towards those numbers it's hard to say economy is stabilizing. For comparison, the expected inflation in India is around 8-10% and that's why you don't see the pinch in the Indian economy right now even with the tightening of rates. I am no predictor of the future, but more likely the US interest rates will hit the range of 10% before we start seeing any easing in inflation. Once we see unemployment numbers going up consistently for a couple of quarters that will be the sign of economic stabilization I think.
  • adam_arthur 4y ago
    The low inflation and high unemployment in 2008 came after Fed tightening took effect and the recession was in full force. We'll almost certainly see the same thing this time within the next year. The Fed let employment velocity and unemployment go far too low to avoid a severe recession. They should have started tightening far earlier
  • tsimionescu 4y ago
    Why are you speaking as if high unemployment is better than high inflation?
    • deepGem 4y ago
      Am not saying it's better, am saying it's inevitable.
• deleted 4y ago
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• primeblue 4y ago
• shubb 4y ago
  Remember that buybacks are another way of returning money to shareholders, and Meta bought 10% of it's shares this year. A 10% yield is pretty significant and reflects its high PE ratio. However, they took on 10bn in debt this summer, joining Apple and the other FANGS. These companies claim to have high margins. For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more, and its revenues are shrinking - that's not a growth stock and that's not an honest earnings. If you need to spend the money to continue to make sales, it's part of your operating costs. If you need to borrow money to continue to operate, you don't have a margin. At least Meta is genuinely spending its borrowed money on future growth (trying to build this VR thing) and is continuing to grow revenue in local currency terms . We might not believe it would work, but it's honest margin. Not a zero profit growth stock - yet. I think we are in a wierd situation where some companies are being more honest than others, and the honest ones will be punished until the pendulum swings in the next 2 quaters.
  • gwd 4y ago
    > For me, if Apple claims to make a 20% margin, but then spends all that money and needs to borrow more... NB that having a large cash reserve and borrowing more money are not mutually exclusive. From a large company's perspective, borrowing money when times are good and money is easy to get are low gives the company a "war chest" to either be able to suddenly invest money quickly should the need arise, or to weather long drawn-out storms, when times are bad and money is hard to get. EDIT: Apple has around $100B in debt, and around $202 billion in cash reserves; it could pay off its debt tomorrow if it wanted to; but then it would have "only" $100B in cash.
    • shubb 4y ago
      Good point