<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>oxfordmale</author><text>In one of my previous company, there was a &amp;quot;keeping the light on&amp;quot; plan. It specified the minimum number of people needed to run the company. However, CEO was clear this was just managed decline and not a viable mode of operating the business.&lt;p&gt;It allowed the company to meet regulatory obligations. However, overtime, customers would leave because of the poor service.&lt;p&gt;Meta can likely run effectively with even less Engineers. However, the lack of exciting projects will prevent them from attracting top talent. Overtime their product offering will become less interesting than their competitors.&lt;p&gt;Napster, Tumblr and Yahoo are still around, however, they are a shadow of what they once were.</text><parent_chain><item><author>smnrchrds</author><text>It would show a decoupling between revenue and headcount, which is certainly bad news for tech workers. Meta&amp;#x27;s revenue in 2022 was 35% higher than 2020, 65% higher than 2019. If tech companies have found a way to simultaneously increase revenue and decrease headcount, the future of employment in tech would not be as rosy as its past.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;268604&amp;#x2F;annual-revenue-of-facebook&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;268604&amp;#x2F;annual-revenue-of...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>suddenclarity</author><text>Returning to 2020 levels. Says something about the hiring frenzy that went on.</text></item><item><author>zwieback</author><text>So from 86000 last year they&amp;#x27;ll be going to 60000ish this year? That is pretty severe. For those of us in mature industries cyclic layoffs are just how things are but 25% shrinkage is scary.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs</title><url>https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23688627/meta-layoffs-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-instagram-whatsapp</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>majormajor</author><text>Things happen based on rates of change now, not just totals.&lt;p&gt;2021 was an abnormally high jump in revenue from 2020 for Meta. 2022 was a drop in revenue, but roughly a return to trend (there&amp;#x27;s a quite linear line from 2016 to 2022 revenue-wise).&lt;p&gt;It looks like they hired based on a wrong guess about Covid revenue growth acceleration being a longer-lasting thing than it was, and now that their revenue growth path is back to their old trend, they can&amp;#x27;t justify all of that.</text><parent_chain><item><author>smnrchrds</author><text>It would show a decoupling between revenue and headcount, which is certainly bad news for tech workers. Meta&amp;#x27;s revenue in 2022 was 35% higher than 2020, 65% higher than 2019. If tech companies have found a way to simultaneously increase revenue and decrease headcount, the future of employment in tech would not be as rosy as its past.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;268604&amp;#x2F;annual-revenue-of-facebook&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.statista.com&amp;#x2F;statistics&amp;#x2F;268604&amp;#x2F;annual-revenue-of...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>suddenclarity</author><text>Returning to 2020 levels. Says something about the hiring frenzy that went on.</text></item><item><author>zwieback</author><text>So from 86000 last year they&amp;#x27;ll be going to 60000ish this year? That is pretty severe. For those of us in mature industries cyclic layoffs are just how things are but 25% shrinkage is scary.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Meta is about to start its next round of layoffs</title><url>https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23688627/meta-layoffs-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-instagram-whatsapp</url></story>