Facebook (now known as Meta) is delaying setting team budgets as it plans for yet another round of job cuts according to reports. Mark Zuckerberg seems to be taking his “year of efficiency” claims quite seriously.
According to a recent report from the Financial Times, Facebook has faced disruptions including at Instagram and WhatsApp as it prepares for another round of job cuts, which are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for a “year of efficiency.”
Mark Zuckerberg surrounded by guards ( Chip Somodevilla /Getty)
There is currently internal uncertainty regarding the company’s future headcount due to the social media juggernaut delaying the completion of multiple teams’ budgets. According to two Facebook employees who spoke to the Financial Times, this has led to staff complaints that “zero work” is being completed because managers are unable to plan their workloads.
Even in high-priority areas like the metaverse and advertising, some projects and decisions that used to take a few days to finalize are now taking up to a month, according to the employees. “Honestly, it’s still a mess,” said one employee. “The year of efficiency is kicking off with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing.”
Staff members are now frustrated as a result of the uncertainty, which has made them feel unmotivated and demoralized. The layoffs in November, which accounted for 13 percent of Facebook’s workforce, resulted in the loss of 11,000 jobs.
As Wall Street investors have expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook’s finances, including its $10 billion annual investment into the metaverse and its bloated headcount, Zuckerberg’s plan for a “year of efficiency” is intended to reduce the company’s costs. The economic downturn has impacted the company’s earnings. Despite the staff reduction in November, more cuts are anticipated in March as the business is currently reviewing employee performance.
Zuckerberg revealed that the business would be “flattening its org structure” and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions more quickly during an earnings call with analysts last week. Additionally, the business will “more proactive” about terminating unsuccessful or low-importance projects. In some instances, managers are asked to transition into roles as individual contributors or leave the organization.
Some employees are worried about this reorganization effort, internally referred to as “the flattening,” because they believe those who change roles are essentially being demoted. Another worker claimed that the process of ranking and merging the jobs of middle and senior managers was known internally as “calibration,”
The disruptions at Facebook come amid a sell-off in Big Tech stocks over the past year due to challenging economic conditions and marketers’ tightening of budgets, particularly those reliant on advertising dollars. Since tech executives now admit they overextended during the digital boom of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a general job cut in the sector.
Read more at the Financial Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan