Facebook’s parent company “pays a lot more than many gaming companies,” said Andiamo CEO Patrick McAdams, who hires tech talent for companies large and small. It’s no exaggeration to say that the total compensation of the big game companies is double or more than double.”
“Anything over $500,000 is nothing out of the ordinary,” McAdams said, adding that the best packages are often given to highly skilled developers and technical team leaders.
The eye-popping rewards package is just a small part of the multi-billion dollar investment the company is making to build the so-called Metaverse, a seemingly realistic computer-generated space where users interact with each other. . Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said virtual reality-powered headsets, augmented reality-powered glasses, and a corresponding suite of programs would be the next great computing platform, and eventually some theorized to replace face-to-face communication in The company will change its name from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect these ambitions.
But Meta’s high salaries and long-term investment in the Metaverse came amid frenzied pressure to keep costs down across the sprawling company. Last month, the company announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of a months-long downsizing and restructuring effort for the social media giant. These job cuts follow his 13% cuts in November, when he cut 11,000 jobs in the first major cuts in the company’s history. bottom.
Mr. Zuckerberg called 2023 the “Year of Efficiency,” promising to cut middle management and cut redundant projects.
Meta declined to comment.
A former Meta Human Resources employee says the company’s unusually high salaries for developers building virtual reality products means the company is willing to spend more than its competitors to attract top talent for a wide range of jobs. It is said to be part of a larger trend.
“They are well above market rates for many positions,” said the former Meta recruiter. And then, “Once I made the offer…there wasn’t a lot of competition.”
Meta, whose business relies heavily on digital advertising, has been trying to overcome serious financial challenges. The company faces increasing competition for advertising dollars and new rivals such as short-form video network TikTok for user acquisition. Apple’s new privacy rules, war in Ukraine, and rising inflation have destabilized the market, prompting some digital advertisers to cut back on their spending on social media ads.
Wedbush Securities Financial Analyst Dan Ives said: “The company has he invested in 30 to 40 different projects, many of which were not social media related, exacerbating the headwinds of digital media.”
Meta’s latest effort to be leaner and more efficient is part of a larger wave of tech companies laying off employees and cutting projects in the face of new economic pressures. Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and even Apple have cut all their headcount in recent months, along with executives from Silicon Valley startups. Over the past two years, the tech industry has lost at least 332,614 jobs, according to Layoffs.fyi, his website that tracks layoffs in the tech industry.
Zuckerberg said he increased his company’s investment during the pandemic because he believed overly optimistic predictions that the e-commerce market would continue to surge and that advertising revenue would rise after the threat of the coronavirus pandemic subsided. Told.
Overall, Meta said last year that 20% of its spending went to Reality Labs, Meta’s division responsible for building Metaverse products. The division lost more than $13.7 billion last year, according to the company’s regulatory filings. This is up from his $10.2 billion in 2021.
Meta found many ways to spend money. Last year, the company debuted his $1,500 price tag, the Quest Pro, a high-end virtual reality-powered headset. The headset, which received mixed reviews from critics, was aimed at corporate employees and businesses as a collaboration tool.
Meta is also investing in research to improve the underlying technology of the device to give users a more realistic presence in the Metaverse. The company has acquired at least seven virtual reality studios to improve the range of apps available on its devices. A few days before we changed our company name from Facebook to Meta in October 2021, announced Over the next five years, it plans to create 10,000 new highly skilled jobs within the European Union. This includes workers who help shape the metaverse.
Meta says it will be years before its Metaverse ambitions come to fruition, partly because the underlying technology is still in development. The company is trying to create glasses that can project computerized images into the real world. Meta continues its research to make the physical and virtual worlds seem indistinguishable to users of VR headsets. So far, Meta’s existing headsets have struggled to achieve mainstream popularity.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company hasn’t moved away from its bet on the Metaverse, though it has suggested it may make cuts at Reality Labs. Or the willingness to pay big for talent.
According to data from , virtual reality developers offered jobs at Meta in the past nine months earned an average of $538,800 in compensation, placing them in the top 90 percentile. Levels.fyi, track salaries in the tech industry. This figure is higher than the $495,400 Apple paid its highest-paid developer and the $440,000 Google paid his VR programmer, data shows. According to the data, Apple, Google and Meta all paid comparable base salaries.
Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Anshel Sag, head of virtual reality business, said Meta faces competition for virtual reality talent as more companies enter the virtual reality market. I’m here. Earlier this year, PlayStation released a new virtual reality headset. According to media reports, Apple plans to unveil a similar high-end his device later this year.
“No longer needed [up mostly because] A lot of companies are waiting for Apple to launch,” said Sag.
Data shows that Meta generally tends to give employees full compensation packages, including stock and bonus options, more often than their competitors. Meta’s share price has been volatile over the past year and a half, leaving workers and candidates uncertain about their total compensation. Also, some of the company’s reputational crises, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the revelation that a Russian-based operative used Facebook to influence his 2016 presidential election, have led to the company’s talent made it more difficult to employ
An executive at a small game company said it lost an opportunity to hire a senior developer last year. The candidate said Meta was offering $800,000 a year and he could earn over $1 million if he or she got a high performance bonus.
“This candidate was a senior. [developer who didn’t have] super unique experience [or] said the executive, who requested anonymity to discuss internal issues. “Facebook was doing something pretty wild a year ago.”
