Comment by RandomWorker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RandomWorker | Hacker News Reader

My sense is that meta currently reflects the value in the market it should have. Generally markets expect during a down turn, slimming of staff, focusing on the core fundamentals, and improving net operations. Mark is doing the exact opposite. Continues to move away for core add business, no big firing drives, no efficiency improvements (or even announcements of said action), but retaining of staff(mostly), lots of the cash on hand going to new (unproven) profits. The announcements on firing people have been weak and don’t show up on the balance sheet because meta keep hiring for the new project.

Definitely Mark defies markets and people are pulling out. Estimate forecast revenues are used to determine future value in the short term. That 100 value are the people believing in the long potential and existing value.

If Mark is right and the browser is the past, and googles are the future (what does a future like that smell like? - unbox therapy) he could become even more wealthier, if he is wrong (most certainly he is, 3D tv didn’t make it) fb will continue to decline. Until the value is the core business minus ceo risk minus fun projects.

> Generally markets expect during a down turn, slimming of staff, focusing on the core fundamentals, and improving net operations.

Why?

In particular when the general market of the sector is in a downturn, quite some great people are typically laid off. So, this is a, say, once-in-a-decade opportunity to hire lots of great people.

Also, if the sector is in a general bad shape, hardly anybody expects the profits to be great. So, use this opportunity to invest the available cash into speculative projects of high potential.

If the economy is in a bad shape, less people will buy your products; thus it is of lesser priority to have a product available. But since, by the previous paragraph, you invested your money into more long-term projects of high potential, you will have quite some potentially lucrative products available as soon as the economy recovers.

> once-in-a-decade opportunity to hire lots of great people

Only if the company is able to execute on something useful with those people. Otherwise it's a waste of money. Great for those employees, maybe.

> Only if the company is able to execute on something useful with those people.

First: finding useful projects to do with the employees is what managers are for.

Second: if you read into HN threads for the past few years, you know that quite a lot of companies are looking for great programmers to hire and claim that their inability to find such people hinders their growth. So, with the coming recession, these companies might get their desired opportunity.

That was more of a pointed comment at Meta. Other companies may indeed have good uses for talent.

I think Zuck has taken all the bad news about social media and stuff and wants to change course and be remembered as the "guy that made AR/VR mainstream" and not the negative social media connotations... What other reason is there? Just to make more money? He already made enough.

> Just to make more money? He already made enough.

It's never enough for these guys. It's a game and money is the score, they just want to run up the score.

Well they can’t all invade Parthia and die horribly! Might as well run up the score.

That's a bit Crass

Is your comment meant to imply that Zuckerberg continuing to try to create or advance a new technology, even though it has a high likelihood of causing him to lose (a lot) of money, is a bad thing?

Nah VR solves his browser problems. Sony Rootkit style access to the user's system, with VR drivers/launcher, Access to biometric data like eye/mouth tracking (users making their own), whatever you can fit on a fitness watch (advertising with heart rate and blood pressure biometrics), and of course camera access to the user's room.

Likewise I imagine it's soul draining to Zuck being told no by Apple. So they're probably obsessed with making their own walled garden.

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