"I bet the company on metaverse and I was wrong." Or, "now looks like a really good time to lay everyone off because all the other companies are doing it too"
A favourite Mr. Robot scenes has everybody at the AllSafe office
wearing a giant badge with their most fundamental truth written on it.
It mocks a "post-privacy" some fools advocate, via the cynical eyes of
Esmail's hacker character Elliot.
Point being; human relations don't work on "truths" but on carefully
managed mutually secured fictions and personas to protect us and
preserve power relations. Traditionally we call those "manners"
(tactical lying so others can save face etc). But for the comedy of
unexpectedly volunteered truths, who wouldn't enjoy a Mufti Day, where
everyone at work gets to speak the unvarnished truth with absolute
impunity for a day?
Would telling the truth be better if the real truth was “We’ve been waiting for a good excuse to drop a bunch of people and boost the bottom line short-term so we can get some loans”?
p.s. I’m making up a scenario based on other businesses, I have no idea what meta is doing these days
I don’t think it’s that simple — yes maybe in private you could say that, but this would set them up for an investor revolt or make them come across as huge assholes if they say things like that.
They may be true, but telling it to everyone is definitely not always better.
Of course. It's not about the best move or what looks better. Nobody cares for that.
It's about the truth. That's what people care about in the end. And if none of it was said here, parent is pointing out that Mark is truly an ass. Something like "laying off people because other companies are doing it" is pretty fucked up.
The tech industry labor market has been cooling rapidly this year, it's not only ad-tech companies, and certainly not only in companies who might have over-hired due to betting everything on metaverse.
For better or worse (obviously for worse) his relationship with the company is fundamentally different than that of every other employee. He’s a founder and holds a majority of voting equity. That makes him inherently unaccountable in a way that is nearly without precedent in the modern corporate era.
What does that even mean? He won't have to work for a few centuries instead of a millennium? Lol.
Compared to his employees' livelihoods, a billionaire losing some bit of their immeasurable wealth is irrelevant. He made a stupid bet and doesn't suffer any real consequences for it because Meta has no real accountability.
If we want to treat the numbers as meaningful and make low effort quips about wealth inequality being bad for society when they go up then we must also concede that it is meaningfully bad for him when the numbers go down if we are to be logically consistent.
Personally I think beyond a couple billion it serves no purpose for quality of life for anyone and we only care in order to crudely "keep score" of who's in charge of more "stuff" since it can't really be liquidated or repurposed other endeavors efficiently and these people are de-factor world leaders in some capacity (a private industry analogue to GDP if you will).
That wealth is not “immeasurable”. It’s just hard for someone to understand when their point of comparison is personal finances.
It directly impacts his ability to start new companies, new charities, etc. This is on the scale of wiping out the abilities to create fabs, do infrastructure projects, etc.
Are you trolling? that would be worse for literally everyone involved. Have you held yourself to this standard in your professional life? it seems so absurd
Yeah, in 2008 I saw the writing on the wall. Told my team we'd all be laid off soon. I finished the project I was on first and was the first laid off due to no more work.
"I bet the company on metaverse and I was wrong." Or, "now looks like a really good time to lay everyone off because all the other companies are doing it too"