Napoleon marched 600,000 soldiers into Russia. Burned villages behind him for supplies. No retreat planned. Total commitment.
Moscow was empty when he got there. Russians had torched their own city. Nothing to conquer. Nothing to eat. Winter coming.
He walked back with 100,000 men. The rest froze or starved on roads he’d already burned.
That’s Meta right now.
Cutting 20% of the company. 16,000 jobs gone. To fund $115 billion in infrastructure spending. For models that keep failing. Llama 4 Behemoth? Cancelled. The new one called Avocado? Underperforming.
Already cut 11,000 in 2022. Another 10,000 in 2023. Now 16,000 more. That’s 37,000 people in four years.
Every round you lose the ones who actually know how things work. Institutional memory walks out the door. The ones who stay are already updating LinkedIn.
And the bet has to hit now. Has to. No way back. Can’t rehire 37,000 people and rebuild what you burned.
Napoleon was sure Moscow would surrender. Zuckerberg is sure the next model will work.
Both burned the road behind them. Both betting everything on a city that might be empty when they arrive.
Meta just fired 16,000 people to fund tech that keeps flopping
byu/Vouchy-MOD inEntrepreneur
Posted by Vouchy-MOD
6 Comments
Way too soon? Meta did not layoff 20% of the company yet. There is just an article on Reuters with no clear sources that talks that it could happen. Let’s wait for that to really happen before you make a full AI generated post from the news. K?
the 37,000 haven’t been fired yet.
Did Twitter burn down when musk fired all his staff? Facebook could be ran by 10 people.
Blows my mind anyone in America, the users who prop up their revenue, uses a single meta product.
3rd world nations? I get it; kudos to Zuck for essentially positioning his services as the gateway for Internet and communication. Fantastic.
In the states…
Facebook & IG: There is not one fucking reason to use this anymore; it’s essentially an ad feed. Marketplace? What in God’s name are you buying and selling on a daily basis to justify your account.
Whatsapp: there’s dozens of alternatives all of which are probably ran by providers that don’t have decades worth of privacy violations and court cases.
Glasses: No comment
VR: Niche novelty toy
What am I missing?
When was the last time Meta did anything innovative that people actually liked? Aside from the acquisitions and the stolen Snapchat and TikTok features, they’ve just been blowing capital on bullshit that hasn’t gone anywhere. When they put Alexandr Wang in charge of AI, and let Yann Lacun walk, I knew they were cooked.
I’m equally surprised how bloated those companies are, if they can even remotely handle cutting that baby people and still continue to operate.