<story><title>Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/technology/meta-layoffs-employees-management.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>&amp;gt; The Metaverse was always such a bad direction.&lt;p&gt;This seems like a bit of 20&amp;#x2F;20 hindsight. At the time, the biggest concern Zuckerberg had was that they didn&amp;#x27;t own &lt;i&gt;a platform&lt;/i&gt;. Apple had the iOS ecosystem, Google had Android, Microsoft had Windows, Amazon had AWS and their logistical moat. Zuckerberg made a bet that the world would move to VR similarly to the way the world moved to PCs in the 80s, which allowed Microsoft to take over a big chunk of the world.&lt;p&gt;Zuckerberg&amp;#x27;s fear wasn&amp;#x27;t unreasonable, he just bet wrong. Apple&amp;#x27;s privacy changes had a huge impact to Facebook, and the other FAANG without a &amp;quot;moat-defining platform&amp;quot;, Netflix, is also in the most precarious position among the big techs.&lt;p&gt;That said, I agree with most of the other comments. I can see VR evolving a little beyond gaming I guess, but it&amp;#x27;s actually kind of a nightmare to imagine myself wearing a fucking headset all day. At this point I think Zuckerberg knows he bet wrong and AI is the future, and he&amp;#x27;s clearly trying to pivot, but it&amp;#x27;s really hard to move a big company like Meta quickly, and it also means he has to admit he just lit billions and billions on fire.</text></item><item><author>mmmmmbop</author><text>The Metaverse was always such a bad direction. At the time, I was really unsure about my intuition -- I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it&amp;#x27;s worth pivoting his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have &lt;i&gt;some data&lt;/i&gt; to back that up. As it stands, my intuition (and everybody else&amp;#x27;s) turned out to be right.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto. Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit fractal. At the height of the crypto boom, I was beginning to doubt my conclusions and started to think that perhaps the societal nature of crypto is a force in itself. Like religion, if enough people believe in it, it becomes reality to some extent. But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It&amp;#x27;s clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be, and that they are providing clear value right away. It&amp;#x27;s no wonder that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards it. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company pivot two years too early -- I&amp;#x27;m sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot to today, it&amp;#x27;d be towards generative AI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>2muchcoffeeman</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;This seems like a bit of 20&amp;#x2F;20 hindsight.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;2nd Life, The Simms, various MMORPGS. We have loads of experience buildings virtual worlds with virtual belongings and conducting meetings virtually. I was part of a WOW guild that had meetings about raids and other small bits of admin stuff in game.&lt;p&gt;But a company known for being sketchy as heck slaps on 3D goggles and makes it less fun and I’m supposed to want to be in it?&lt;p&gt;I think you’ll find that a lot of people were skeptical.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/technology/meta-layoffs-employees-management.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>&amp;gt; The Metaverse was always such a bad direction.&lt;p&gt;This seems like a bit of 20&amp;#x2F;20 hindsight. At the time, the biggest concern Zuckerberg had was that they didn&amp;#x27;t own &lt;i&gt;a platform&lt;/i&gt;. Apple had the iOS ecosystem, Google had Android, Microsoft had Windows, Amazon had AWS and their logistical moat. Zuckerberg made a bet that the world would move to VR similarly to the way the world moved to PCs in the 80s, which allowed Microsoft to take over a big chunk of the world.&lt;p&gt;Zuckerberg&amp;#x27;s fear wasn&amp;#x27;t unreasonable, he just bet wrong. Apple&amp;#x27;s privacy changes had a huge impact to Facebook, and the other FAANG without a &amp;quot;moat-defining platform&amp;quot;, Netflix, is also in the most precarious position among the big techs.&lt;p&gt;That said, I agree with most of the other comments. I can see VR evolving a little beyond gaming I guess, but it&amp;#x27;s actually kind of a nightmare to imagine myself wearing a fucking headset all day. At this point I think Zuckerberg knows he bet wrong and AI is the future, and he&amp;#x27;s clearly trying to pivot, but it&amp;#x27;s really hard to move a big company like Meta quickly, and it also means he has to admit he just lit billions and billions on fire.</text></item><item><author>mmmmmbop</author><text>The Metaverse was always such a bad direction. At the time, I was really unsure about my intuition -- I figured that if Mark Zuckerberg decided it&amp;#x27;s worth pivoting his entire company towards that goal, he surely must have &lt;i&gt;some data&lt;/i&gt; to back that up. As it stands, my intuition (and everybody else&amp;#x27;s) turned out to be right.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s been the same with crypto, for that matter. None of the reasonable people I know ever saw any grand value in crypto. Researching myself, it always just seemed to be a bullshit fractal. At the height of the crypto boom, I was beginning to doubt my conclusions and started to think that perhaps the societal nature of crypto is a force in itself. Like religion, if enough people believe in it, it becomes reality to some extent. But now we see that crypto was indeed bullshit all along.&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the generative AI models revolution. It&amp;#x27;s clear to anyone from day one how useful those models will be, and that they are providing clear value right away. It&amp;#x27;s no wonder that all the companies are immediately pivoting towards it. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg was just unlucky to decide on a company pivot two years too early -- I&amp;#x27;m sure that if he had to decide on a direction to pivot to today, it&amp;#x27;d be towards generative AI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danaris</author><text>&amp;gt; This seems like a bit of 20&amp;#x2F;20 hindsight.&lt;p&gt;I dunno about you, but I and basically everyone in my circles at the time agreed that it was most likely a terrible idea.&lt;p&gt;Until and unless there&amp;#x27;s a truly convenient piece of hardware to get one into a virtual space—I&amp;#x27;m talking weight and bulk comparable to prescription eyeglasses, no wires going beyond your body (ie, maybe a pack at the belt&amp;#x2F;pocket&amp;#x2F;something like that), and some form of extremely intuitive UI—you&amp;#x27;re not going to get people interested in regular interactions in a VR&amp;#x2F;AR space.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, even once we &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have something like that, I think it unlikely that many people would choose to do things like meetings in a virtual space over something simpler like Zoom, even if they &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; already own the hardware.&lt;p&gt;And none of these views have changed over the past few years.&lt;p&gt;No; I think Zuck has been far too isolated and out of touch with how regular people operate for too long, and when faced with, as you say, the fact that Facebook was only running on other people&amp;#x27;s platforms—and it became clear that no one was interested in &lt;i&gt;making&lt;/i&gt; Facebook their platform, like by buying a Facebook phone—he convinced himself that this was The Next Big Thing based on sheer desperation.</text></comment>