Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by habinero on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @06:37AM
(#33530121)
Or they'll start their own companies. Not a bad time to do it.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by whywhywhywhy on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @06:41AM
(#33530155)
If they’re doing that then it means Meta, Twitter, Stripe, etc process got rid of the wrong people.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by HgW33WiY6m3W4H9 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @06:53AM
(#33530259)
I work at Stripe. I can’t throw a proverbial paper clip at this company without hitting someone who could be founding a company right now. There’s no way to lay off 14% of Stripe without setting free scores of future founders.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by naijaboiler on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @08:00AM
(#33530944)
hubris of tech workers. as if starting successful companies is just that easy
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by sillysaurusx on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @08:23AM
(#33531209)
It’s helpful to remember that we’re collectively doing about 1% of what we theoretically could be accomplishing.
If you somehow forced someone to sit and practice drawing a hand for eight hours a day, they would get surprisingly far as an artist.
Being a founder isn’t too dissimilar. Determination tends to be decisive.
If you spent eight hours a day trying to make a small group of users love you, you’d get surprisingly far.
I think that’s what they mean about potential founders at Stripe. There’s a lot of potential energy that a layoff might release.
my guess is that most, if not nearly all, successful founders were pulled into that position (i.e. self-directed) vs pushed out of desperation.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by d6rd7rxuxutx on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @10:14AM
(#33532725)
I'm not sure about that.
Starting a company is a risk vs reward calculation. If they were getting high salaries it wouldn't be unreasonable to want to minimize your risk by working on a project on the side while getting a bigger saving bank until a certain point. If you get fired the calculation is now whether you want to invest in job search or take the plunge and start the company
If you were that risk averse (that you didn’t act on your entrepreneurial instincts) when times were good, my money is that you’re more likely to double down in searching for safety.
I don’t know that there are any stats on this so in the end it is juts your and my opposing instincts :-)
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by Firmwarrior on Thursday November 10, 2022 @01:23AM
(#33542961)
A lot of entrepreneurs' personal stories start off with a setback like this last couple of weeks have imparted upon thousands of people
I'll bet a lot of those "low performers" just had a hard time jumping through hoops at the circus, but will do just fine out on the savannah
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by whimsicalism on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @03:01PM
(#33537052)
This is the "live laugh love" of the Bay Area.
> It’s helpful to remember that we’re collectively doing about 1% of what we theoretically could be accomplishing.
Is this supposed to mean anything at all?
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by throwaway2037 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @08:57AM
(#33531652)
I feel exactly the same. I would love to run my own tiny company, but it looks very tough to bootstrap. Everytime I hear someone say it is easy, I cringe.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by ransom1538 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @09:36AM
(#33532167)
Uber for cats will rise again!
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by mywittyname on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @10:19AM
(#33532805)
OP isn't saying it's "easy". They are pointing out that forming a startup is achievable by a small (scores = several 20s ~= 60-100) number of people impacted.
Imagine thinking that starting a new company is a bad idea. It might not be easy, but the engine of progress is the birth of new firms, not the monopolization of markets through a handful of them. The vast majority of jobs are provided by small to medium-sized businesses, not companies like Twitter or Stripe. This is particularly true in Europe, but it's quite universal. We need new companies, even if some fail (or even most).
Not necessarily… a potential good startup founder is not necessarily a skill set that a FB needs right now. And many business ideas that aren’t “FB-scale ideas” can still be quite successful for a small founding crew.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by underdeserver on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:04AM
(#33530344)
Not necessarily. There may be business opportunities that Meta, Twitter and Stripe are not interested in.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by stephencanon on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:12AM
(#33530430)
That’s right—-any time you’re laying off thousands people at once, some of them will the “the wrong people”. There is no mechanism for mass layoffs that can accurately target only “low performers”. Even if these layoffs reflect good decisions, good decisions at corporate scale are not necessarily good decisions at the individual level.
Let's hope so
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by scarface74 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @06:47AM
(#33530213)
Except for that whole funding environment being dead thing. Not to mention that nine out of ten startups fail even in good times.
I used a 1yr severance as a seed fund for my current company.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by scarface74 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:16AM
(#33530470)
That doesn’t dispute the fact that only 1 out of 10 startups “succeed” and that definition of “success” is overly generous.
No, it doesn't dispute that startups are risky, even if you know what you are doing. By the way, water is wet, too.
Wouldn't layoffs starting at larger tech companies imply demand is waning and there would be a much smaller market for all of these new startups?
Demand for what, though? Startups can cover ... well anything, really?
There's certainly less demand for Facebook's style of social media, for sure.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by schnitzelstoat on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @08:01AM
(#33530955)
Yeah, ads revenues are down which means a whole load of ad-supported business models are no longer economically viable.
I don't think a recession with low demand and high interest rates is a good time to start a company at all.
Demand is always growing in some markets. I predict major growth in the defense and agriculture technology markets over the next decade.
Clean tech also seems big - even if the Republicans did manage to gut federal support for renewables (I’m doubtful given e.g. how much money Texas wind farms are making) consumer trends are looking solid and a lot of state policies represent locked-in market.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by reaperducer on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @09:25AM
(#33532001)
Wouldn't layoffs starting at larger tech companies imply demand is waning and there would be a much smaller market for all of these new startups?
It depends on how you define "startup." They don't necessarily have to keep staring at screens for their living.
It was mass layoffs of real estate and banking workers in 2008 that kick started the food truck industry.
This is a valid concern in a recession but there are different niches and business models. Facebook has been very profitable selling ads but that’s not the only option, and there are opportunities which might be a good fit for a small company which a big one is structurally incapable of finding. After the dotcom crash, I knew several people who found solid niches selling services to other businesses - it didn’t have the hypergrowth potential of something like an ad-supported social network but most of those fail, and there’s a lot of money in less sexy industries.
Re:Meta lays off 11,000 people
by netheril96 on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:25AM
(#33530559)
Fed raising the interest rate is hardly a good time to start a startup.
Only for startups that depends on free money from Fed like Movie Pass, Juicero. Startups with sound ideas should be fine.
Only if you can start a company that's revenue positive from essentially day one. Burn rate provided by suppressed interest rates and cashed up Venture Capitalists is quickly becoming a disappearing concept.
The first dotcom crash was good that way: people make worse decisions when they have piles of VC funny money and anyone with a real business has trouble standing out when the field is full of competitors burning bright but fast.
Isn't this about the worst time to start a company? Uncertain economic outlook, high inflation, high borrowing costs.
Less competition, more available labor, the books start with a "this is hard" and get better when things get better (compare with starting when things are easy and then having it rough when times get hard)...