According to reports, Meta asked engineering managers to identify and fire the worst performers in order to control costs in the economic downturn. On Friday, Meta engineering director Maher Saba sent a memo to engineering managers urging them to identify employees on their respective teams who “need support” and to report the list to the internal HR system by 5 p.m. Monday.
“If your direct reports are lazy or underperforming, they’re not the people we need and they won’t fit into the company,” Saba wrote. “As a manager, you can’t allow yourself to be unable to contribute positively to Meta People stay with the company.”
Along with the memo, Meta executives sent multiple messages asking subordinates to focus on the need to cut costs to help the social media giant navigate a stagnant digital advertising business and help it expand into virtual reality. The news came as a shock to many employees, who feared that Meta could undertake measures such as layoffs, salary cuts or narrowing of promotion channels.
“The reaction after seeing the news was that the move was to form a whole ‘performance improvement plan’ and potentially trigger mass layoffs,” said a person familiar with the matter. Meta has yet to comment.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, this social media giant has gained a lot of digital advertising revenue after years of development and has become an essential platform for various companies to release targeted marketing information for segmented users.
Previously, Meta and other social media companies benefited from the pandemic as more advertisers shifted their marketing budgets online, hoping to reach users who were spending significantly more time at home because of the pandemic.
But Meta’s shares have fallen nearly 52% since the start of the year amid threats to Meta’s social media business. Apple implemented a new privacy policy for iPhone app developers, hoping to reduce their collection of user data. It also forces apps such as Meta’s Facebook to seek consent from users to track their online activity for targeted advertising. However, many users refuse to be tracked.
In the last three months of last year, Meta’s daily active users fell for the first time in the company’s 18-year history, sending shares tumbling. While the company’s user growth figures held steady at the start of the year, its executives warned they faced serious challenges from rising stars on social networks such as TikTok.
In order to compete in a highly competitive market, Meta is also actively promoting the Reels short video service. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) also said that they can monetize the product like News Feed. Meta is also trying to bet the company’s future on the metaverse — a term that refers to an immersive virtual environment accessed through virtual or augmented reality technology.
According to media reports, Zuckerberg said on an all-hands conference call this month that not all employees meet Meta’s criteria and that some may leave voluntarily because of the impending economic downturn. Zuckerberg also told employees that Meta plans to reduce its engineer hiring plan this year by at least 30 percent.
“If I had to judge, I think this is probably one of the worst declines I’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told employees. Shouldn’t stay with the company.”
Meta’s tightening strategy also mirrors the plight of other Silicon Valley companies. After a decade of prosperity, venture capitalists and incumbent tech companies alike are squeezing investments and shrinking their workforces. More than 300 startups have cut jobs since the start of the year, affecting more than 50,000 people, according to data from the tech industry layoff tracking website Layoffs.FYI.
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