The Scoop is a bonus series covering insights, patterns, and trends I observe and hear about within Big Tech and at high growth startups. Have a scoop to share? Send me a message! I treat all such messages as anonymous.

The Scoop sometimes delivers first hand, original reporting. I’m adding an ‘Exclusive’ label to news that features original reporting direct from my sources, as distinct from analysis, opinion, and reaction to events. Of course, I also analyze what’s happening in the tech industry, citing other media sources and quoting them as I dive into trends I observe.

Today's topics are:

Meta: a second round of layoffs and restructuring to come. The tech giant announced it will let another 11,000 staff go, and is also closing 5,000 open positions. I talked with software engineers there to get a sense of the mood inside the company, and what they expect will happen. Exclusive.
Amazon doubling down on RTO (return to office). The tech giant is not blinking: after the unprecedented pushback on its 3-day return to office policy last month, Amazon just made it clear that the policy is going ahead. I talked with engineers inside the company for their take. Exclusive.
Is ChatGPT causing panic within Big Tech? Large-scale language model ChatGPT is taking the industry by storm, despite Big Tech companies having invested heavily for years in natural language processing (NLP) teams. Are these teams now panicking, and can we expect Big Tech to increase or decrease investment in NLP? Analysis.
How much do full-remote take-home exercises pay? During their interview process, several full-remote companies ask software engineers to complete take-home exercises, which can take several days to complete. Among companies which pay candidates for their time, what are the rates? I gathered details from engineers. Exclusive.

1. Meta: a second round of layoffs and restructuring to come.

The Pragmatic Engineer

The Scoop #41: Meta’s Big Restructuring to…

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