Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Winter is coming and no one can escape.

What should have come came.

After the layoffs had been brewing all weekend, Mark Zuckerberg finally announced Meta layoffs on Wednesday morning, November 9:

This is the first major layoff in Meta / Facebook's founding history and will affect more than 11,000 employees, or about 13% of Meta's total workforce.

"I am personally responsible for the decision to lay off employees and for where we are today," Zuckerberg wrote in an email to all employees."I know this is a difficult situation for all. I am deeply sorry for the employees affected. "

Zuckerberg said the company has already started other cost-cutting and efficiency measures, including freezing recruitment until Q1 of next fiscal year and cutting some discretionary expenses in company operations and employee work. "layoffs are a last resort. "

After the announcement, Meta shares soared again: closing yesterday at $96.47, opening Wednesday at $101.72, soaring immediately, up 8% during the day and falling in the afternoon to close at $101.47, up 5.2%.

Investors may see the layoffs as good news for Meta's profit margins, but behind these numbers is the bitterness and panic of countless ordinary people affected.

(For those affected, the Silicon Star people summarize mutual aid and company information that is still recruiting at the end of the article, which can be checked out).

Overall, as Zuckerberg wrote in his letter to all employees, Meta cut 11,000 employees in this round, of which recruiting and business jobs became the hardest hit areas. But that's not to say that no engineers have been laid off in this round. In fact, some revelations from Meta and social media show that some engineering departments have a high proportion of layoffs.

The first is a significant reduction in the number of recruiting positions, which read "will be disproportionately affected."

A LinkedIn search for relevant keywords revealed that a large number of layoffs were posted by employees in recruitment and talent acquisition positions. There is a saying that Meta originally had 6000+ recruiter (recruiter), cut in half.

Kelsea Pullin, a technology recruiter, said she had worked at Microsoft for nine years before making the difficult decision last year to jump to Meta's Reality Lab, where she mainly recruited researchers and scholars. But I didn't expect to be laid off soon after joining.

Some in the industry ask why Meta has so many recruiters, and it's no wonder they're cutting--Pullin's post also provides an answer: recruiters also work with many other non-recruitment issues within companies, such as DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion). "I really didn't expect something like this to happen to me. "

Some of the laid-off employees announced the news on LinkedIn. At the same time, the layoffs in the Business position are also considerable. Zuckerberg pointed out in his layoff letter that the team will undergo "deep restructuring." Also on workplace Social networks, you can see a lot of business positions intensively, such as creator docking, advertiser relations, product marketing and other employees, posting to indicate being laid off.

Employees who "survived" pointed out that they found patterns:

Many of those being laid off are relatively new employees, such as those who joined in the last year, especially since the stock price plummeted recently. The reason for this situation may be that the company has already set the number of shares allocated to older employees, and when it issues more shares to new employees, it will lose more because of dilution.

As for the engineer layoffs: After the official announcement, many outsiders thought that the layoffs did not affect non-engineering employees.

However, according to what the Silicon Planet people learned from multiple sources, Meta's engineers were not spared this time, and there were many layoffs.

According to Twitter, Blind, and Meta employee circles, a common story is to cut the total number of engineers by about 10%, mainly starting with employees who perform poorly.

The silicon people know roughly that the layoff rate of engineers varies from 5 to 10 percent in different organizations.

It is also worth noting that there is a large randomness in the layoffs of engineering positions.

Most anecdotal evidence suggests that this time around, it's mainly from poor performers. However, there are also former employees on Blind who said that last quarter's evaluation was EE (Exceeds Expectation exceeded expectations), and they were still laid off...

Image source: Blind and in the forum, some people also said that they (data scientists) and managers who reported directly were laid off, and they did not get a poor grade in the previous performance appraisal.

Combining the information from all sides, we found some key details worth digging up:

1) For engineers, there is no absolutely safe business department, even some advertising departments under Family of Apps (such as FB, Instagram, etc.) and even employees in Reality Labs will be laid off.

2) There is also no absolute safety level, and chief engineers (staff) and senior engineers will also be laid off.

3) Layoffs are not completely linked to performance, and many high-performing employees have also been laid off.

Last week Twitter was rumored to have a brainless way of looking at code line cuts, but this week Meta layoffs seem to really look at code volume. The senior engineers in the company probably suffered a loss here. Since their main tasks were planning, writing documents, etc., the actual amount of code submitted was very small, some even zero, and the result seemed to be very obvious...

In addition, the Silicon Planet people learned that the biggest hit this time was the newly joined employees and would-be graduates. Many employees who had previously jumped to Meta were unfortunately included in the layoff list, and some prospective graduates who had previously received Meta offers also revealed that their offers had been withdrawn.

And finally: before the Meta layoffs leaked last weekend, word was out on Wall Street that Meta planned to cut costs by $3 billion to $4 billion (next fiscal year) through layoffs and other fixed cost reduction measures.

Assuming that all cost reductions are achieved through layoffs, and based on the median annual salary of Meta employees of US $300,000 in 2021, the number of people to be laid off in Meta this round will be between 10,000 and 13,300, accounting for about 11%-15%.

In reality, Zuckerberg finally chose 11,000 people, accounting for 13%.

And at a cost cut of $4 billion, there's clearly room for further layoffs.

Therefore, there are new rumors in the market: Meta is just taking advantage of the recent two days of the US mid-term elections, Twitter layoffs, and currency circle wars. The rest are then slowly optimized through various means, such as natural attrition (retirement, resignation, job cancellation, etc.), small layoffs, PIP (performance improvement plan), etc. These follow-up optimization arrangements may be announced as soon as next week to the end of the year.

"Be prepared for the worst," wrote an employee from another Silicon Valley factory commenting on Meta's layoffs.

Employees laid off: where to go Meta's layoffs were revealed by The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. According to anonymous employees, only the company's core executives knew about it at the time.

Middle management, including most directors and managers below, began to receive informal and formal notifications only on Tuesday.

"Mondays are fun, everyone's taciturn," said one Meta employee."But everyone knows 100 percent that [layoffs] are going to happen, and a lot of people are spreading the word..."

The employee revealed that he noticed that his team didn't do any meaningful work all day on Monday,"and it's probably the same tomorrow. "

By the time the boots landed Wednesday, the surviving employees felt both sad that their colleagues had left and relieved that they had kept their jobs. In the circle of friends of Silicon Planet people, many Meta employees call themselves "temporarily safe," but many people are also sad because of the sudden departure of some colleagues who have met together and cooperated. A Meta employee told the Silicon people that although he was not affected, watching many people leave was "a big psychological shock."

Many of the laid-off employees flocked to social media to "ask for help." They either continue to find their next job because of status problems, or they are on maternity leave or other special periods and urgently need the livelihood security provided by work.

Even many people began to tell their experiences and feelings of being laid off on TikTok.

Image source: TikTok especially former employees in the visa/immigration process. Meta has been targeted by USCIS (U.S. government immigration administration) because of suspected visa abuse. The relevant identity approval process was suspended for a time, and then it did not fully return to normal level and speed. And this layoff has caused many people to fall directly into the abyss.

A Google employee posted that he has received many messages from former Google colleagues working in Meta who want to return to Google just to make the visa/immigration process safer-even if the salary is reduced.

Another former Meta employee complained that he was still on maternity leave when he was laid off, but many colleagues at the same level, as well as new colleagues in the team, and even those whose performance was worse than his own, were not laid off.

"Now I don't know where to put my opinion. I don't know what to do next. "

Meta is decent compared to Twitter? Compared with last week's Twitter "massacre" chaos, Meta's layoffs, although twice as many, actually made everyone feel "decent." Perhaps Zuckerberg's layoffs and compensation are at least a little more human than Musk's ruthlessness.

First look at the layoff notice letter, Zuckerberg said at the beginning: I made the decision, it is my fault that the company has come to this step today, and I feel very sorry for everyone.

Source: Blind In terms of compensation measures, Meta's layoffs provide conditions that at least meet or exceed industry standards:

Severance compensation: continued payment of four months 'regular basic salary plus two weeks' salary for each year of service (no ceiling);

RSU allocation: All laid-off employees will still receive the November 15 allotment as normal;

Immigration support: The company's immigration officer continues to provide visa immigration assistance to laid-off employees;

Health insurance: All affected employees and their families will still enjoy six months of health insurance;

Paid leave: unused paid leave is also credited to compensation;

Job Search: The company hires an external HR vendor and provides career support for three months.

Inside Meta, employees also try to confirm whether their friends have been laid off by various means.

One mu three points of the user said, At first is to use the system to query each other's user name, If there is no is cut; Later to noon afternoon, The company's internal organization list has been updated, Can see the surviving people_Did not see is cut.

Although the laid-off employees are also dealt with by "rejecting system permissions", Meta did a good job this time, that is, it did not close the mailbox of the laid-off employees. They can still use the mailbox to say goodbye to their team friends for a while, and download and save the next key files.

Twitter last week mercilessly shut down all systems, Slack and email permissions for employees, and many employees were "canceled" while saying goodbye to each other.

From the point of view of text organization and information transmission, Zuckerberg's whole letter is quite sincere. A LinkedIn employee, speaking anonymously, said he had always thought Zuckerberg was a billionaire robot, but the letter was surprisingly decent:

"When it comes to layoffs, honest internal letters are certainly not as important as real compensation, but at least this time Zuckerberg did both well. "

However, some people sarcastically said: He is pretending to be human, because he will continue to face the remaining 70,000 people... and he decided to make a big layoff on the US mid-term election day, isn't it to divert everyone's attention?

Despite the layoffs, Zuckerberg also mentioned that all organizational structures of the company, including Family of Apps (also known as Old FB) and Reality Labs (also known as Meta-Universe), will be affected by layoffs. However, most people already have a consensus: the inherent purpose of this wave of layoffs is to eliminate redundancy as much as possible on the old FB side, so that the meta-universe business can fly higher.

By laying off employees today, he has shown the world his determination. Zuckerberg is sorry about the layoffs--but it's clear that Zuckerberg has decided to do whatever it takes for the metauniverse.

Photo source: Bloomberg For friends affected by layoffs, many Chinese organizations in Silicon Valley have begun to recommend new job opportunities to each other. Silicon Star people will continue to collect similar information and update them in the next few days.

Mutual assistance information sheets currently available:

Job Information List:

Meta Layoff Help Doc

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n-1Mb4wUikZ_FB1sDOeXpTiFdqJ7qC8WlOs02ODKqBQ/edit#gid=0

mutual assistance

https://zzn.li/jobs

Recruiting company https://docs.google.com/ spreadsheets / d/1u9li-f7j9_XABMN5GE80kqpfa_mtj3Gq1UPx8Mgp2Hg / htmlview? pru=AAABhIHUjFE*eczCzlTjBRe3PXqkjZL8jg

Career up clubhttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HCd3V9gY0oikrgpWysrmmxzbTm9jjypMkqFTmjko7SI/edit#gid=0

SVLC help formhttps://forms.gle/qqrSgMXWp6a7V9hB7

Ming Daohttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfbjzTBiDLw9Bw3c20yWAGLVPnKSBpaqf9QuYIowi-X2XlzA/viewform

Product Pubhttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QrqWoIqZDz1HHkL85ZV4Je2DSNZETU7mJybT_A7TKE8/edit#gid=0

You can also add discord first: discord.gg/ XEg9fCq42J

or https://zzn.li/ discord newspaper group heating

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Guixingren (ID: guixingren123), author: Du Chen, editor| VickyXiao

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