Hacker News Reader

Comment by ausbah | Hacker News Reader

>In April, Meta reported first-quarter revenue rose 3% from $27.91 billion a year earlier, after three straight periods in which it declined.

>Despite the cost cuts, Meta is still investing heavily into the nascent metaverse, and its Reality Labs unit, which is developing virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, logged a $3.99 billion operating loss while generating $339 million in sales in the first quarter.

>Investors have praised Meta’s major cost-cutting, sending the social networking giant’s shares rising 180% to $246.74 since bottoming at under $89 in November.

the company has money, management keeps investing in a dead end product & making workers pay the price for its lack of success, and the soulless ghouls who parts of the company make money off people losing their jobs

this seems wrong

View on HN

Completely obliviating the "human" part of what an employee is, reducing it down to a mere number on a balance sheet, will never sit right with me. In the end, what those companies are ultimately taking a risk on is people's livelihoods.

I wonder if Meta will have a hard time finding quality talent after all these lay offs. Why should we trust Meta going forward? Same with Google and Amazon. They’re just not companies I trust to look after me as an employee and treat me like a human rather than a number on a balance sheet

That’s why they pay double what normal employers do, who will also fire you at any time.

I see no tragedy here, everybody who actually cares sees the mission of this company clearly, and they are pretty open about it, so accepting that juicy paycheck comes with some baggage. Just another societal leech making the world worse one step at a time.

Same as some high tech banking positions, you accept morally dubious work and get compensated adequately. I dont see people here complaining when ie Goldman Sachs fires 10% of the workforce either, rather some childish schadenfreude is not uncommon.

Look at it this way - maybe those brilliant people will grok the life lesson and tune down their greed a bit and try to make the world a bit better place instead. Or go on. In any case, hardly something to get agitated about (unless folks write about themselves but then all above still stands)

Agreed. High-risk, high-reward is common in tech. But in better times, the high pay becomes more expected, and is seen less as a hedge against job loss.

There are at least three variations of this question every weekly Q&A with MZ.

"Efficient allocation of capital"[0] does not factor-in human misery.

0. Assuming for a moment yhat such a thing exists.

Grinding the worker into a fine paste for profit has been the American way since at least the 60s. FDR made a few steps towards a sustainable life as a worker and business interests WENT TO WAR.

Eventually we got a president who fired every air traffic controller in the country instead of trying to make a literal safety critical job reasonable and well compensated, and a huge amount of people lauded him for his anti-worker action.

Meanwhile "liberal" groups basically did coke and nothing else for several decades, losing any support they ever had with a lot of working class people.

So yeah. We have an entire generation of management that knows nothing more than quarterly profits, stock buy backs, and executive bonuses to the point that the rewards from a doubling in American productivity all went to about 100 people at the top of the food chain, and they bought all the newspapers and convinced half the nation that thinking this is wrong is treason and socialism.

This was their actions after they failed to overthrow FDR in the business plot. They wanted fascism in the 30s.

I saw hints of this in Mises book Human Action.

Do you have other sources that support this assertion about the 30s?

The business plot is not an assertion, it is well documented and public knowledge even back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

> Completely obliviating the "human" part of what an employee is ...

Used to be called "Personnel" - dry but definitely about human beings. Now it is "Human Resources" with the emphasis on the faceless resources part.

Personally I’m happy they’re not pivoting or giving up on that investment. I think VR/AR is the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com