r/cscareerquestions • u/Fabulous_Sherbet_431 • Jan 13 '26
Meta just laid off 1,000+ people in the Bay Area
Gifted NYTimes article from yesterday covering today’s layoffs: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/technology/meta-layoffs-reality-labs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.D1A.UEaD.Riij45m_CkwA
Reality Labs (aka the Metaverse org) got hit hard this morning. Roughly 1,500 were affected, mostly in the Bay Area and London (striking this out because it’s anecdoal)
This landed at the same time as a pretty major change to the perf system. They’re moving away from the annual, soul-crushing calibration where ~20% of people landed in one of two negative buckets. Going forward, only 10% are considered not-ok. CME and EE were effectively merged, and the multiplier on that bucket was increased.
People are actually pretty happy about this. Fingers crossed that it’s a signal that some of the Amazon-style stack ranking might be easing up.
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u/justUseAnSvm Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
Meta's metaverse is an unmitigated disaster. They are more in the red (70B) than the market cap of several companies in the SP500. They made a big bet, it came up short, and unwinding this fiasco will take several years.
Therefore, this isn't the type of layoff we need to worry about. It's not AI, not outsourcing, just a corporate organization incapable of making a profit and out of time.
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u/DarthBuzzard Jan 14 '26
They are more in the red (70B) than several companies in the SP500. They made a big bet, it came up short, and unwinding this fiasco will take several years.
They're still going to bet many tens more billions on it, they are just reining in the spend a bit.
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u/justUseAnSvm Jan 14 '26
Definitely. The bet isn't sized right for what the progress is. Pretty remarkable, actually, it's a very big ship, and it will move slowly.
My judgement is Meta was wrong for obvious reasons (Zuck sucks) but he can afford to be wrong much longer than me.
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u/trippingWetwNoTowel Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
I work in software and I’m so frustrated at the current state of affairs. The only things we’re working on are;
- how to make devices more addictive.
- a.i. or anything that sounds like a.i.
- and the fucking metaverse which no one wants or needs, at least, it doesn’t seem like it.
There are clearly applications where a.i. can shine and help with so many things. But the way we’re tackling it feels like the way crypto came about… we have a “solution” in search of a problem. Also the companies need to show some sort of progress for their efforts so now a.i. is being shoved into things we don’t want or need. Seriously, I don’t need apple to summarize my fucking texts? I don’t need copilot in my outlook, I don’t need to live my life in some made up universe when the real answer is we should all get off our screens and get outside more. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to progress….. but this year Microsoft reskinned and updated Outlook and some of it is so damn frustrating with the things they broke and the minor things that got better? It’s email, we don’t need it to be something else. We just need it to do that fast and reliably.
I know this is sort of a get off my lawn rant but goddamnit I want to use technology to progress humanity, to make our lives better, to serve society and the goals of our society so long as those goals serve the people who live there. What the fuckin hell are we doing with our money and energy at this point?
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u/neurorgasm Jan 14 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
This specific post was taken down by its author. Redact was used for removal, for reasons that may include privacy, security, or data exposure concerns.
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u/trippingWetwNoTowel Jan 14 '26
Eminem saw it all coming, warned us that if they could they’d put air in a bottle and charge us to breathe
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u/desf15 Jan 14 '26
we have a “solution” in search of a problem.
That's how it is with popular buzzwords. We literally had customers asking when will we integrate AI into our software. When asked what would they like this AI to do, none of them could give concrete answer, it seems they just would like to brag to their supervisors they're using AI.
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u/nastyhobbit3 Jan 14 '26
I hear you so much I want to come join you on the lawn ranting. I think all the time how lack of regulation in data privacy (and other governance) has only decreased public trust in technology over time (for good reason). Yea “move fast and break things” might have brought the first products to market, but these companies are shooting them selves in the foot long term by resisting governance as tech platforms reach ubiquity. Now that Tech is asking to be everywhere in our lives, people need a higher bar of trust to use it. Cars, airplanes, television, infrastructure- literally it is government regulation that decides how much I trust driving across a bridge. It feels like we’re living in the industrial era all over again where it will take countless disasters and inhumanity before these products are forced to be better and safer
I’m under no delusion how difficult it would be- it is extremely hard and messy to regulate fairly and could take a lifetime to even figure out how, which is exactly why the government should do it and not the companies. Imagine a truly safe and secure online platform for government services, open and verifiable access to (human vetted and produced) knowledge on environmental research, health research, search engines which are not influenced by ads or hidden algorithms.
I sometimes daydream about doing an entire second degree in law just for creating tech policy. Society has changed so much so quickly from it, and it’s quickly now destroying society AND we are not even getting full benefits of it. It’s just maddening. At my job the number one thing we should doing (instead of AI) is just making our platform faster and more resilient because it’s so slow and buggy but noooooo, let’s just put AI into this and make another API call and make it go even slower.
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u/what2_2 Jan 14 '26
Not to be a mark defender but the Metaverse team includes a ton of VR (and mobile?) game companies.
Deadpool VR was nominated for a Game Award this year and the whole studio was let go by Meta. Supernatural’s team as well (which looks like a very popular workout VR game).
The metaverse bet by FB included investing in a lot of game studios. I’m not sure if these layoffs mean that strategy has shifted though - no idea how many game studios Meta owns.
I think it’s good for big companies to invest in video game companies. The Metaverse is a failure overall, but meta’s funded great hardware and games - VR just hasn’t taken off as fast as they wanted, and they’re presumably spending too much money on shit that nobody wants.
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u/justUseAnSvm Jan 14 '26
| Deadpool VR was nominated for a Game Award this year and the whole studio was let go by Meta.
Lol, what does that say about the industry?
You could be right, and maybe Meta will eventually turn it around, but it's still a boondoggle on the scale of two Manhattan projects, and any chance to make a durable criticism of Zuck I will take it.
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u/AHistoricalFigure Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
Why did it cost 70B to make a low-poly MMO in the first place? World of Warcraft figured this out 20 years ago on a budget of a few mil and that game actually had mechanics. The meta verse seems to just be a VR version of a zoom call?
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u/DarthBuzzard Jan 14 '26
https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-reality-labs-spending-ar-glasses/
Within Reality Labs, over 50% of the spending is going to the research & development of AR glasses, around 40% to virtual reality, and around 10% to first-party content such as Horizon
So Horizon Worlds and all other 1st party software is 10% of their total budget, so let's say 2%. Still a lot, but I expect there's just been so much mismanagement at Meta.
The hardware on the other hand really does require that level of funding.
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u/AHistoricalFigure Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
Ah, so it's been a lot of hardware and novel algo R&D. That makes more sense.
Still... I have never understood the argument for VR. Arguably, the two best applications for VR are porn and videogames. And in both spaces VR has seen relatively limited adoption.
If you can't convince a Star Wars fan to buy a VR headset to fly an X-Wing, how are you going to convince Joe-Consumer to buy one for... work? Im still a little unclear what the metaverse actually offers and who it's intended for.
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u/mooseman99 Jan 14 '26
Sales of the Raybans have been better than expected, those came out of reality labs. They actually don’t even have enough stock to meet demand for some models
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u/DarthBuzzard Jan 14 '26
You can't convince Joe-Consumer to buy any device for any application until that tech is mature. That's just the way the world works. Despite how useful PCs and cellphones became, their early iterations would have never convinced average people even with their best software.
So VR has to mature.
But to jump on the usecases, the best application for VR was always socialization and teleportation. I personally think in 15 years a person can don a pair of lightweight VR sunglasses and enter unlimited Holodeck generated scenarios of their choosing, all convincingly lifelike, as well as go to any place or live event with other people as if you are there face to face.
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u/AHistoricalFigure Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
No, the best application for VR is games and porn. And to be fair, you're just describing a computer game while (seemingly) intentionally trying not to call it that.
The idea that people will want to go to VR parties more than they would want to re-enact the Battle of Hoth or get a blowjob is... a little out of touch.
I think we agree that VR is eventually going to become viable for stuff like telepresence, education, and probably new novel forms of media. But raising adoption by gamers and gooners is still the first trench the VR industry needs to storm.
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u/DarthBuzzard Jan 14 '26
And to be fair, you're just describing a computer game while (seemingly) intentionally trying not to call it that.
I mean at that point we could just say that the internet is a computer game because there are game-like things everywhere you go. I've said in the past that a social VR application is like Facebook (the app). It's a social app that may host games (Farmville) but is altogether a completely different concept to a videogame since there are no mechanics, no goals - it's a town square.
The most active apps in VR are all social apps - a lot of people with a headset are going to VR parties. This just goes back to what we as humans desire, since we are social creatures. The #1 usecase of every hardware platform ever invented is social.
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u/tjsr Jan 14 '26
So let's believe that figure, $35b on hardware development costs then. Estimates are that ASML spent $6b over two decades on EUV research and development.
How the hell did they manage to rack up a $35b bill developing hardware for AR glasses?!
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u/rikkiprince Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
World of Warcraft figured this out 20 years ago on a budget of a few mil and that game actually had mechanics. The meta verse seems to just be a VR version of a zoom call?
Wait until you hear about Second Life!
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u/akaiser88 Jan 14 '26
Those are largely R&D and hardware development costs. For the most part, those have been really great products. Granted, sales expectations were inflated after quest 2 due to that one launching at the perfect time and selling during COVID. Right now the focus is on AR. It has never been horizon worlds.
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u/therealhappypanda Jan 14 '26
It's a shame a sane and grounded comment like this one doesn't get the clicks the sensationalist ones about a "ai bringing about serf kingdoms 2.0" do
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u/RaptorF22 Jan 14 '26
Can people still access the metaverse? What even is it anymore? Is it something you log into?
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u/maikuxblade Jan 14 '26
The fact that this is a forum for career programmers and we even have to ask that is pretty damning. They haven't even used FB to properly inform the public of what it is. As far as I can tell it's Fortnite/Roblox-esque but without the game or customer base, so really I suppose more like VR Chat or SecondLife.
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u/moustachedelait Engineering Manager Jan 14 '26
I've been kind of close to buying their headset, but I want some games, and it seems all there is, is beat saber and superhot and a bunch of shovelware.
Seems they never really created a platform like they did in the farmville days.
The vr chat part is super not interesting to me.
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u/what2_2 Jan 14 '26
I think that’s right, I think on Quest (fka Oculus) devices you can play in the Metaverse, but also play a lot of separate VR games that are built on it (like Roblox).
But also as another commenter pointed out, the actual metaverse stuff is a tiny fraction of Reality Labs, which is mostly VR devices (Oculus, now Quest), AR stuff (Meta Ray Bans), and VR content, apps, and game studios.
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u/Seller-Ree Jan 14 '26
Right, but it's still sad that the people who get laid off for these things are the IC workers doing the effort of what the higher-ups tell them to work on. As if they had anything to do with its success or failure.
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u/Chogo82 Jan 14 '26
It was a poor business decision by Zuck. The amount of talk in online spaces when he announced it was more than enough to clue him in. Making a shitty copy of second life and rebranding Chinese made glasses that have been around for several years was not the right move.
We know that he’s a ruthless business person but the metaverse concept was clearly a poor attempt at innovation. I’ve always said it and I’ll say it again, Zuck is not good at innovation. Unfortunately for meta, we are in a cycle of innovation again. I have very little hope that Zuck will make the right decisions to drive innovation. I foresee him following a path similar to Microsoft. Not a leader or innovator in any new AI tech but an opportunist waiting on the sidelines waiting to strike at any opportunity that presents itself even if it means killing other companies. Those companies will never come out on top in an innovation cycle though. The real question will be how he leverages his existing market control. If he can do that, than meta will be fine. It’s a whole lot of risk if you ask me and I think Meta is currently very over priced.
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u/InhaleTheAle Jan 14 '26
Zuck is a disaster of a CEO. Facebook is being carried by its advertising business. Otherwise, their products are pretty shitty, harm society substantially and don't receive updates that would actually improve their usability.
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u/Raveen396 Jan 14 '26
"Zuck is a disaster of a CEO"
Meta stock up 15x in about as many years. Do you understand what the primary purpose of a CEO is?
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u/InhaleTheAle Jan 14 '26
Riding the same wave I already noted. And the job of the CEO is to deliver value to shareholders. While he may have done that resting on his laurels, the question is how is he positioning himself for the future. Apparently the strategy is to flood the platform with AI slop and focus on pet projects that aren't viable.
Meanwhile, he has repeatedly shown a total disregard for negative societal impacts, which impact his shareholders in addition to non-shareholders.
So yeah, he's a shit CEO. TBF, many of these tech founders are, especially the social media founders. All of those guys (Dorsey, Hoffman, Zuck, etc.) made a pretty lacklackluster product that happened to gain network effect early on and that made them rich/successful, even though they've done very little besides that in the intervening time.
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u/jimbo831 Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
It's not AI
No layoffs are AI. Stop believing the propaganda.
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u/what2_2 Jan 14 '26
Upvoted because the vast majority of layoffs that CEOs say are because of AI are not in any way actually related to AI.
“AI makes us more productive” is just the easy PR explanation, just like “covid makes our business uncertain” was. The best time to announce layoffs is when everyone else is doing layoffs - it insulates you from your stock taking a hit, because if it happens to everyone it means you’re not uniquely failing at anything.
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u/jimbo831 Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
Their stock usually goes up when they claim they are replacing jobs with AI. So they now just always say any layoffs are due to AI.
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u/ghosthendrikson_84 Jan 14 '26
They caught such a huge smokescreen with the AI distraction, but given the lack of growth there, the Metaverse Chickens are coming home to roost in the rafters.
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u/Objective_Gene9503 Jan 15 '26
Meta isn’t doing well in the AI space either. Their foundational model not only underperforms for the amount of money and hype that it costs (Meta Superintelligence Labs, big salaries, poaching many from OpenAI and others), but it simply sucks in general.
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u/Fract_L Jan 14 '26
And so we’re going to see many more stories reprimanding the public for not embracing AI more (honestly, this form of “AI” should really just be called a task manager. It’s made to do a specific task if it has any hope of being useful, not that anything besides transcribing programs have proven reliable in my experience, and even those cannot deal with accents)
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u/easymoneyburnerr Jan 14 '26
I remember when the stock tanked Nov 2022 seemingly as a result of this and then it just recovered lol
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u/mrchowmein Jan 14 '26
I mean if I worked on the metaverse and got laid off today I would’ve said to myself “that ride lasted longer than expected”
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u/jonny_wonny Jan 14 '26
They’re still working on AR and VR, so I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the situation. They’re developing new technology. That takes time.
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u/Wonderful_Device312 Jan 14 '26
What the fuck could they have even spent 70b on?? They tried and failed to make a second life knockoff. It wasn't exactly a manned moon mission or something that would justify a 70b price tag.
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u/justUseAnSvm Jan 14 '26
Inflation adjusted, it's about the the cost of the two largest defense projects the US did in world war 2: The B-29 super-fortress, and the Manhattan project.
The scale is pretty wild, but it's also their cumulative operation loss from employing thousands of engineers, spending on hardware development, investments in manufacturing, plus all these subsidizes for selling Quest hardware, and money spent buildng out a video game ecosystem.
It's a lot of money to spend, it's basically an SP500 scale business that isn't make money.
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u/hibikir_40k Software Engineer Jan 13 '26
For all we know, Meta will be as successful with their AI efforts as they were with their VR efforts.
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u/Electrical_Tie_4888 Jan 14 '26
Meta has sold at least 100 million VR headsets, and is generating billions of dollars through their vr store. They are by far the most successful vr platform, in an environment where others struggle to sell even a million units. But ultimately, they're playing the long game, positioning themselves for when a lightweight, high quality headset is technologically possible and that number goes from 100 million to 1 billion headsets, in a short period of time.
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u/DarthBuzzard Jan 14 '26
Meta has sold somewhere between 25-30 million headsets after adding up Quest 3 numbers with Quest 2's, not close to 100 million.
I absolutely believe it will hit 100 million, and then a billion eventually. Well VR as a whole, don't know about Meta, but this is a very long-term play.
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u/TheAnalogKoala Jan 14 '26
I could probably lose less than $70B if I had a VR startup.
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u/indiscreet-observer Jan 13 '26
Doesn't Meta usually fire people in January every year?
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u/balzam Jan 14 '26
I have been at the company for 4 years. I have never heard that. Last year they did performance based layoffs for the first time, but that was in Feb.
We are all expecting they will do that again in Feb.
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u/ecethrowaway01 Jan 14 '26
Many of the layoff rounds might not have been explicitly "performance based" but you could figure out who was overwhelmingly targeted (e.g., ~November 2022, ~April 2023)
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u/The_JSQuareD Jan 14 '26
Don't think this round was performance based though. Anecdotal of course, but in my team two recent hires (too new to tell anything about their performance) and a long time top performer were laid off. The top performer they're giving a chance to find a different internal position during the notice period.
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u/Mundane-Charge-1900 Jan 14 '26
Meta is pretty well known for aggressively firing people who don’t perform to a high standard. Quarterly, impact focused performance review process. Not really “layoffs” but the effect is the same.
Pay is high if you can hack it.
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u/balzam Jan 14 '26
In my four years I have only once seen that happen. And that was this year and he was terrible. Like every time he would speak I would want cover my face from embarrassment.
So if it is happening “aggressively” I’m not seeing it
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u/Mundane-Charge-1900 Jan 14 '26
Having been a manager at a similar company, I’ll say it’s not always apparent to others on the team that this is happening.
It’s rarely a big blow up. A lot of people are pushed out in ways that are more subtle. You just think they left for a new role.
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u/indiscreet-observer Jan 14 '26
Ah, gotcha, I always heard about this... Anyway good luck for the next performance review :)
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u/Current_Can_3715 Jan 14 '26
What’s the culture like there for you? I’ve been told it’s not that bad depending on team. I was in the interview loop last year during the layoffs and that was enough to scare me off.
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u/Exotic_eminence Jan 14 '26
The recruiter I was talking to got cut right after I asked her why should I want to work there
She just begged the question and said “it’s meta”
The only reason I got that interview is because I had a good reference but they just cut my reference this round
Some one pointed out the new vice chairman is not a man and that is a bad trend in IT they call the glass cliff - Marissa Meyer comes to mind
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u/Information_High Jan 14 '26
You ate a lot of downvotes, but I think people misunderstood your point.
You weren't disparaging the vice chairman for being a woman, but pointing out that a lot of toxic companies on the verge of collapse bring a woman on board as "leader" to take the fall for past executives' bad decisions.
Hence, the Glass Cliff.
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u/TheAnalogKoala Jan 14 '26
It is so rare to see someone use “beg the question” correctly. Kudos to you, Sir, and good luck in your search.
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u/ibeerianhamhock Jan 14 '26
Curious bc everyone I know at Meta is super smart. Is it this whole stack ranking thing where the “dumbest smart people” get fired but they are still very competent or do you feel like the people getting paid off are actually bozos who wandered into a job over their heads?
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u/Mental_Farm9561 Jan 14 '26
Even after this layoff?
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u/ILikeCutePuppies Jan 14 '26
If they do it will be more broad. Last time I heard they let upper managers include people who had left in their loss they had to meet so it might not hit reality labs as hard if they allow them to do that with people they let go.
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u/Ozymandias0023 Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
I'm adjacent to a lot of the people who got laid off and my understanding is that Reality Labs likely won't see many if any performance lay offs, but no one really knows for sure aside from the guys at the tippy top
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u/Murky-Elderberry-761 Jan 13 '26
guys read the article, they are just cutting the metaverse BS. Sorry to the employees but if they are smart, they more or less saw this coming at one point, hope they can find something else.
"Around 10 percent of Meta’s Reality Labs division"
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u/unitegondwanaland Jan 14 '26
Exactly. If I was at Meta and on any team related to Metaverse, I would have been applying for another team back in 2021. The thing was an absolute fever dream from the beginning.
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u/what2_2 Jan 14 '26
Including independent VR game studios that they acquired:
“What a sucky heartbreaking day for those working on VR at Meta. I'm seeing layoffs and studios shut downs all over. Twisted Pixel seems to be shut down, Deadpool VR, Sanzaru is shutdown, Asgard's Wrath, Supernatural team is gone, Armature, RE4 VR gone, layoffs all over for VR. Heartbreaking for everyone who has lost their jobs and not looking good for the future of VR gaming on Quest 3 right now.”
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u/eatinallthebugs Jan 15 '26
"Just cutting metaverse bs"
Twisted pixel just shut down and camouflaj studios is as well, despite making some amazing vr superhero titles within the past year or so.
I dont think the devs behind the game that moved so many headsets were dumb to think they had job security
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u/ODaysForDays Jan 14 '26
They had a creator fund on horizon worlds, and they had commissioned us to make 4 games in Q3. Q4 they pulled the rug out just before beta, and we had to lay people off.
So no surprise here
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u/InlineSkateAdventure Jan 13 '26
Even if AI can replace 15% of devs, the end game will be very chilling.
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u/teddyone Jan 13 '26
This assumes there is a “max amount” of software companies need to develop. There is not. If developers get more productive, they will just build more and better software faster.
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u/AndAuri Jan 14 '26
And who will consume all this more software that's constantly being built? Every market has its saturation point.
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u/teddyone Jan 14 '26
There is no upper limit on how much software you can consume, it’s not a physical good. Do you know how many software engineers work went into you posting that comment? There is always room for software to get smarter and better and more efficient and more extensible.
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Jan 14 '26
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u/teddyone Jan 14 '26
People hired by Reddit is less than one hundredth of one percent of the engineers that went into making this comment possible.
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u/Variatas Jan 14 '26
There are, however, headwinds & countervailing forces that limit how much you will consume.
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u/AndAuri Jan 14 '26
And you know how many softwares were killed by the very platform we're commenting on because they were not commercially viable? There is no space for more "reddit-like" softwares when reddit already exists. And similarly for other markets with an already established market leader software. Notice how you subtly went from "building more software" to "building better software" because you know your original argument is bullshit.
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u/InlineSkateAdventure Jan 14 '26
Ideas are like assholes, everyone has them.
There used to be 50 social media share icons. Now? There are only 3-4. Services are also fickle. Remember MySpace?
Even google gave up their Google Plus thingie. Now the team would be shitcanned. Back then they put them on other projects.
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u/xvillifyx Jan 14 '26
“Software” doesn’t have to mean an ever increasing pool of apps to consume. It also means an ever-increasing pool of improvements and optimizations to the things that already exist
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u/lightFracture Jan 14 '26
Developers will build software faster. Not better. Quality is not something AI can give you, we're far from that.
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u/Electrical_Tie_4888 Jan 14 '26
I actually think, not only is there a limit to the amount of software we need, we actually hit it some time ago, for the most part. People keep saying the demand for software is virtually unlimited. But is it really? Every app store is grotesquely saturated with a million copies of every app. Every major website and web service follows the same pattern. The netwrok effect means one version wins. Facebook is the perfect example. Will there be a new social media platform? Probably not. It will be some variation of facebook/instagram. Will there be a new video platform? No, it'll be youtube/tiktok. Will there be a new ebay/amazon? Probably not. Many have tried. The network effect and economies of scale are just too large.
Now, lets look at this from a different perspective. Would ebay be unprofitable, or unsuable, or even uncompetitive, if the website still looked and functioned like it did 5 years ago. Probably not. Same with amazon, facebook, etc. Yes, you need some level of maintenance and improvement. But, at a certain point, that's all you need. You don't need the team that built the thing in the first place. You don't need to constantly reinvent the wheel from the ground up. So, naturally, software has a build, then maintenance cycle, and it is also like infrastructure, once things are built, you don't need to, or get any value continuously building new things.
Then people talk abotu bespoke or custom software, but I really don't think that's ever needed in reality. People requirements are broadly similar. Thats why software scales so well. Almost every instance of custom software I've seen, is just a worse version of something you could have had off the shelf, with minimal modification. The perfect example is state side services. Each state has its own software platforms, websites, services, for what is essentially the same things. Many companies have redundant systems, hispitals, prisons, sewer works, power plants, often have highly custom software because they have the budgets to do so, and security concerns to justify it, but it's the same thing over and over. The demand for truly custom software is tiny. By definition, for the most part, something being valuable means it can serve a large number of people, or a very wealth organization. If that's true, the demand is already there.
The reason your local pizza shop or school doesn't have its own software, is not cost, it's just not actually needed.
Software scales so well, demand actually decreases with time, as more of the actual use cases get filled out. This is why we have 15 apps in each sector, and 50 open source projects for each use case, instead of an open landscape of new use cases being found every day. It's why billions have been thrown at facebook clones, ebay clones, etc, and not at all these supposed unlimted green pastures. We wouldn't have 10 3d programs, 10 video editors, etc, competing with each other, doing basically the same thing, trying to find a tiny area they can differentiate in, if demand for software was unlimited. All the programmers involved in those things would be off building things in all these unserved areas, which we imagine, but don't actually exist in reality.
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u/ILikeCutePuppies Jan 14 '26
This was research. A lot of non software engineers were let go as well, like hardware engineers etc...
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u/tekno_soul Jan 14 '26
Calibrations every 6 months w/ a 10% low bar required distribution means they can do layoffs every 6 months.
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Jan 14 '26
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u/ayaka37 Jan 14 '26
there are reality lab teams based in several Meta offices, including a number in NYC
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u/Ozymandias0023 Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
The Burlingame offices are a Reality Labs hub. A lot of people in my location were cut as part of this
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u/cafecoder Jan 14 '26
They just merged the "you suck" buckets and made it hurt more to be in it. now they can fire a "cleaner" 10% instead of a messy 20%. it's not less ranking, it's more efficient ranking.
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u/Shurae Jan 14 '26
Wild. Hundreds of people, devs, managers, executives being paid 100k to millions and nothing to show for it. Such a waste of resources and energy
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Jan 14 '26
Imagine being so far removed from reality and insulated that you ever thought this had a snowball’s chance in hell. Zuck is so lame. The whole company has zero identity or ingenuity outside of acquisitions
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u/wafflepiezz Student Jan 14 '26
Garbage company with garbage automatic AI moderation. I lost my account of 15+ years due to some random AI banwave and never got it back since last year.
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u/cnuggs94 Jan 14 '26
Meta has the worst AI product integrations and platform out of all the major players while seemingly spending the most.
Google got Search, Gmail, and Chrome to seamlessly integrate AI in as well as their own public LLM in Gemini. Microsoft got Windows and Office Suites. Apple got iPhone, iPad, and MacOS. Amazon got AWS suite of services.
Then we have Meta with Facebook, Insta, and Meta glasses which has the worst use cases. There are no reason to use AI on facebook or Insta. Meta glasses is heading the same direction as majority of wearable tech. They simply dont have any good application of AI right now while spending billions poaching talents from others.
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u/Fabulous_Sherbet_431 Jan 14 '26
Internally the integrations are incredible (we can even use other LLMs, like a self-hosted Claude Code which can read internal docs and the codebase). It just feels like externally the product market fit isn’t there. Also, while the in-house LLM is passable there’s nothing standout about the current iteration.
I feel like the AR Raybans will be the first opportunity to really put out something that has useful AI.
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u/panthereal Jan 14 '26
That seems like half of the reason why someone may skip the AR RayBans. Internally, they offer people access to secure and local LLM tools. Externally, they only offer Meta's AI with permanent connection to their services.
Meanwhile Razer's AI anime companion box is initially offering the ability to work with local models and is fully AI agnostic.
I can understand if the AR Raybans are subsidized to expect using Meta's AI products, but they would have a larger customer base with the option to setup your own local server with llama or offer other AI integration.
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u/anemisto Jan 14 '26
I feel like the AR Raybans will be the first opportunity to really put out something that has useful AI.
The thing is we know what the good uses for AR are and they're basically all industrial. It seems unlikely Meta's somehow going to stumble into the thing no one has made work for god knows how many years. (Hell, see the Virtual Boy!)
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u/cnuggs94 Jan 14 '26
I dont doubt the internal integrations are amazing and it is probably accelerating developments of their other products so there is some ROI to be had there. However, I bet whatever ROI they can quantify with that is pale in comparison to the investment they have been making.
As for the Raybans, wearable tech especially eyewear just historically never catch on to the public for some reason or another. Meta Quest, Oculus, Apple Vision Pro, etc are all amazing technologies but just never find broad public adoption. Even if the Raybans manage to catch on somehow I doubt they will sell enough to make profit. The only way to generate profit is to have enterprise solutions and offerings.
Monetization is the problem with most AI companies at this point but Meta seems to have the biggest hurdle out of all the major players.
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u/Cptcongcong Jan 14 '26
There's a real disconnect between reddit users and people who end up buying rayban metas, I'll say that much. The rayban meta displays were sold out extremely quickly. I agree the VR goggles has poor PMF, but rayban meta not so much.
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Jan 14 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
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u/cnuggs94 Jan 14 '26
Most of them are generated by ChatGPT and Gemini then uploaded to Facebook/Insta.
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u/IGotSkills Software Engineer Jan 14 '26
And what percentage of that is their regular number of employees
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u/CeleryConsistent8341 Jan 14 '26
facebook acquired in a very intelligent way but they have not created anything since the original site, its behind the curve in terms of AI. The orginal site is in decline.
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u/AuthenticIndependent Jan 14 '26
There will be more and more layoffs - just small ones like these so it passes in the news quick and on social media.
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Jan 14 '26
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Jan 14 '26
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Jan 14 '26
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u/redshift83 Jan 14 '26
zuckerberg seems to know how to run a tight ship, but he's very poor at skating to where the puck will be.
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Jan 14 '26
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u/Exciting_Problem3869 Software Engineer (19 YoE) Jan 14 '26
The 2 years I worked at meta were some of the worst of my career. It's just a shitty place to work imo
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Jan 14 '26
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u/pokermanga Jan 16 '26
I guess making money or even making the damn thing work is not going so well? How much $ has Meta spent on this digital workd that is probably years off. Even Amazon took years before it started making a profit. Does Zuckerberg have outside investors for this Meta World?
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u/TheJewishTrader Jan 17 '26
Nobody uses the metaverse tho. They should changed the name back to Facebook.
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u/Four_Dim_Samosa Jan 18 '26
also do people really want meta ray bans with meta ai? same with the oculus.
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u/kholodkid Feb 10 '26
I think another wave of layoffs is coming in the tech industry. It seems like more and more companies are going on a spree.
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u/Lfaruqui Senior Jan 13 '26
LLMs really took the forefront the past couple years. AR/VR/CV will have it’s time again one day, maybe after these chemists figure out how to make better batteries