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It Laid Off 11K Workers This Week, But Zuckerberg's Meta Is Still Recruiting in LA
Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
Despite the company’s decision this week to lay off 11,000 workers worldwide, Meta still appears to be actively recruiting in Los Angeles.
Most of the roles appear to call for skills in augmented and virtual reality, either working directly for Meta Reality Labs — the division focused on VR hardware and the online community Horizon Worlds — or another aspect of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s planned metaverse. The platform's recruitment isn't limited to L.A.; the company's careers site also lists jobs in AR/VR and other divisions located all over the world.
The open roles paint a picture of Meta’s intended virtual reality future. One listing is for an L.A.-based art manager who will work on Meta’s "Avatars" project, which allows users to create a digital likeness that will represent them throughout Meta’s platforms — including the VR platform Horizon Worlds.
Another listing calls for a technical artist that will design the “lighting workflows and key setups” of Meta’s Avatars. The platform also appears to be hiring for a number of different L.A.-based engineering roles, both at Meta Reality Labs and throughout other Meta platforms.
Though these listings remain active, Meta’s AR and VR businesses — which the company has spent over $36 billion on expanding — were not spared from the company-wide cuts. A number of Reality Labs and other VR employees were laid off this week, though Meta has not disclosed how many. It’s unclear whether Meta is now seeking to replace those exact same roles or whether the AR/VR listings are for different ones.
It’s no surprise, however, that Meta is still continuing to hire new people amid layoffs. During the platform’s third-quarter earnings call back in October, Meta’s Chief Strategy Officer David Wehner noted that the company plans to shrink some teams and invest in higher-priority items on its agenda. While hiring at Meta will be “dramatically” slower than usual, Wehner noted that Meta plans to keep its workforce at its current levels or slightly smaller.
“We are holding some teams flat in terms of headcount, shrinking others and investing headcount growth only in our highest priorities. As a result, we expect headcount at the end of 2023 will be approximately in-line with third quarter 2022 levels,” Wehner said during the earnings call.
But prospective job candidates should probably wait for the dust to settle before applying. This week, Meta reached out to a number of recently-hired individuals to revoke their job offers,
“The recruiter from @Meta just informed me that they will withdraw my offer this morning. Does this only happen to me or also other folks,”one individual wrote on Blind, an anonymous workforce community application. The same individual also claimed to have received a written offer and completed Meta’s background check.From Your Site Articles
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Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
https://twitter.com/askhalid
A Breakdown of the Data TikTok Collects on American Users
09:00 AM | July 19, 2022
TikTok has come under renewed scrutiny over how it handles U.S. data, with some lawmakers calling for an investigation into the Culver City-based company.
What kind of data does TikTok collect? And should we worry about a potential national security threat when Americans’ data is accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company?
To answer these questions, dot.LA reviewed TikTok’s privacy policy and interviewed Thomas Germain, a technology writer for Consumer Reports who specializes in privacy issues.
What Data TikTok Collects
Like other social media giants, TikTok gobbles up a lot of user information. To start, TikTok receives names, ages, phone numbers and emails when people sign up for the service. The app also knows users’ approximate locations and mobile device identifiers, such as IP addresses.
Germain told dot.LA the most valuable info may come from the way users interact with the video sharing app. TikTok is quite good at figuring out peoples’ interests based on the videos or accounts they’ve previously liked or followed. Those insights are useful for advertisers and—potentially—for spreading political messages, Germain noted.
“This vast trove of data that every social media company has—on what people are interested in, what makes them upset, what makes them happy—is incredibly valuable,” he said.
The company’s privacy policy permits TikTok to collect a wide range of additional data, from consumers’ keystroke patterns to biometric info. However, the company says it doesn’t necessarily take in or store all of this. For example, keystroke patterns may be used solely for anti-fraud and spam purposes, according to TikTok. Regarding biometrics, TikTok said editing features may automatically locate a person’s face to apply an effect, but those features do not uniquely identify individuals.
Why U.S. government officials are concerned
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance and China is an economic and foreign policy rival to the U.S. government. With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exerting considerable power over the nation’s tech companies, U.S. lawmakers and administration officials contend that TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a national security risk.
“The CCP has a track record longer than a CVS receipt of conducting business & industrial espionage as well as other actions contrary to U.S. national security, which is what makes it so troubling that [ByteDance] personnel in Beijing are accessing this sensitive and personnel data,” Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr recently said.
TikTok says it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, nor would it do so if asked. Additionally, the company recently announced that all of U.S. user traffic is now routed to American software giant Oracle’s servers.
“The TikTok app is not unique in the amount of information it collects, compared to other mobile apps,” the company said.
TikTok is hardly the only company swallowing a lot of data on Americans, from car makers to smart doorbell firms. Consumers’ credit card purchases, contact lists and recent GPS locations are hawked by hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in the so-called data broker industry, Germain noted.
“If the Chinese government wanted it, they could just go out and buy it because it's for sale,” he said. “...I think people, when they're worried about TikTok doing something, they should ask themselves whether they should be worried about American companies doing the same thing.”
Still, Germain said there’s some genuine cause for concern, since China’s government has previously pushed the country’s companies to do its bidding. But to Germain, that concern has less to do with China knowing your phone number and more to do with propaganda.
“The Chinese government could instruct Tiktok to manipulate its algorithm to show people content that promotes the goals of the Chinese government,” Germain said. “That could totally happen and that is something that is of concern. But that does start to move away from questions of data privacy.”
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Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Curri Scoops Up $42M, Mosaic Scores $26M
05:00 AM | June 09, 2023
Image by Joshua Letona
A local logistics platform raised fresh funding to put toward product development, infrastructure and sales and marketing initiatives, while a San Diego-based fintech company closed its Series C funding round to expand its investment in AI which will empower high-growth SMB and mid-market finance leaders.
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Venture Capital
Curri, a Ventura-based logistics platform, raised a $42 million Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
San Diego-based financial platform Mosaic raised a $26 million Series C funding round led by OMERS Ventures.
AHARA, a Los Angeles-based startup focused on providing personalized nutrition suggestions, raised a $10.25 million seed funding round led by Greycroft.
Per an SEC filing, San Diego-based developer of peptide therapeutics designed to assist in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and disorders selectIon raised $5 million in funding.
Miscellaneous
Los Angeles-based Sensydia, a company working on non-invasive cardiac diagnostics, said this morning that it has received $3 million in a NIH grant.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
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