> What's your metric for screwing up? Is it short, medium, or long term? Should short term goals/profits be the only goal of a company?

As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker. A company screws up if it fails to bring profits to the workers. Laying off 11,000 workers certainly falls under a big screw up by that metric. I know companies—such as charity/non-profits exists who have humanitarian goals, or even amusement, as their goals, however I don’t see Facebook there.

But we live in a capitalist society and most companies’ goals are profits for their shareholders. Facebook seems to have screwed that goal up as well. And instead of letting the person who lead the company into this failure pay the price of failing, they take it down on the workers... This seems quite unfair, and is even illegal in many (most?) countries.

> As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker.

I can't extract any meaning from this. Could you be more specific?

Maybe a scenario will help. What if the company becomes not profitable enough (there can be reason's that don't require leadership fault), and it will fail unless workers are let go? Do you let it fail, causing all to lose their jobs, or do you trim the fat, allowing some to continue?

I would assume you would want to look at the whole, more than the individual.

Please note the above happened to a company I worked for, during the last recession, and it was, very objectively, not the fault of the leadership.

In Facebooks case their owner is worth so much, he could give every layed of worker a million USD and it would only cost him a fraction of what he’s net worth. I don’t know your scenario but the recession was for sure a special time. Now companies are seeing record profits and are blundering it in stupid endeavors like the Metaverse, so I don’t think your case applies at all. But in any case, other countries—outside of a global recession—have laws against mass layoffs, companies usually declare bankruptcy if they are at this point, and their respective governments starts a salary insurance program where they pay the workers that lost their jobs for a set amount of time. If the bankruptcy is bad, and the leaders manage to take some money from it, they will go to court for the damages the bankruptcy causes.

If I try very hard to tease out the answer to my question, it seems that you're suggesting that bankruptcy would be preferred to layoffs, with the government providing temporary relief after everyone loses their jobs. This seems like a net negative, compared to some people losing their jobs, and the company possibly moving on to great success, with those remaining, and future, employees.

I apologize if I interpreted your response incorrectly, but it was, again, very indirect.

The purpose of my question was to help me understand your perspective, and to help you present some meaning to your statement "As a worker my metric is first and foremost about the worker."

The workers don’t vanish with the business. If the government provides enough relief these workers can organize around a new business that provides a similar service (maybe even buying the intellectual property and/or branding from the bankrupt estate) under a completely new leadership. Or if the business isn’t actually providing anything useful (like many on this thread are suggesting is the case with facebook) then these workers are probably better off finding new jobs (after being compensated from the failing business).

Facebook is extremely rich, facebook can afford to break apart their business and give part of it to those 11,000 workers. Heck facebook can even afford to keep those 11,000 workers earning 6 digits while being tasked with doing nothing. In either case, it would be in the interest of the worker. What is not in the interest of a worker is having a leadership that makes bad decisions, wastes the time of the workers, and then lays them off. This kind of behavior should not be rewarded.

I can only, as charitably as possible, interpret that as a confirmation that bankruptcy is preferred.

> The workers don’t vanish with the business. If the government provides enough relief these workers can organize around a new business

Starting from scratch is rarely an efficient, or possible, solution, especially anything with IP involved.

> after being compensated from the failing business

Were they not compensated for their time during employment? Wouldn't being compensated for the failing business require knowing the future? I'm not asking this negatively, I'm just trying to understand perspective. Have you ever worked for a startup, or been involved in a small/medium business that's not-yet profitable?

I think you would find extreme risk aversion in a system implemented like you describe, if the only option were continuous success or quick failure. Are there any areas of the world that prefer bankruptcy over headcount reduction, where we could look at the statistics?