Zuckerberg to Meta Staff “There are probably a lot of people at the company who shouldn’t be here”
To summarise: It has been a difficult year for Meta. The tech giant has faced plummeting stocks, a workforce freeze, large-scale turnover and a failed venture in the cryptocurrency space. In a recent Q&A with employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed changes in employee focus, management style and expectations. Unfortunately for Meta employees, the expectation is that many of them are no longer needed or welcome.
During the sessionZuckerberg bluntly told Meta’s staff that “…some of you may decide this isn’t the place for you, and that self-selection is okay with me.”
The statement highlights the company’s need to brace for additional economic hardships and coincides with a ~30% reduction in planned 2022 hires, from its original target of 10,000 to between 6,000 and 7,000 hires this year.
Zuckerberg’s focus on increased performance and reduced staffing is designed to weed out underperformers and those unable to meet Meta’s new performance goals.
His statements come on the heels of Meta CPO Chris Cox’s, whose pre-meeting memo to employees outlined Meta’s intention to “relentlessly prioritize” and “operate leaner, meaner, better-executing teams.”
Despite the staffing and management changes, Cox’s memo also emphasized the need for Meta to expand the number of GPUs in its data centers to support their TikTok-like app, Reels, and to power AI tasked with popping up popular feeds. from Facebook and Instagram from user accounts.
In addition to Meta’s current social media-based services, the company’s hardware division is focused on providing a mixed reality headset to the market. Nicknamed “Cambria”, the next-generation headset will likely feature 16 cameras, as well as eye and face tracking capabilities. The headset will launch in the second half of 2022, with prices reportedly starting at $799.
Many of the changes are designed to help Meta regain ground and accelerate revenue growth for the remainder of the year and beyond. Zuckerbergs and co. strong words may be intended to appeal to investors and shareholders, but will undoubtedly prompt Meta employees to update resumes or look for other safer, more stable opportunities. And it sounds like they should. Statements like these are not just a warning that change is coming, but rather a sign that change is already here and that casualties are inevitable.
