Facebook readies to potentially fire THOUSANDS more workers

2023-02-17

Facebook gave THOUSANDS of workers sub-par ratings in performance reviews – signaling more job cuts during Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘year of efficiency’ (as he bolsters his own security budget to $14 million)

Mark Zuckerberg is readying his staff for another round of mass layoffs after giving thousands of workers poor performance reviews
Despite introducing drastic cost-cutting measures as part of his ‘year of efficiency’, the CEO has also beefed up his security bill by an extra $4 million
The latest job cuts come after Zuckerberg already laid off 10 percent of his Meta staff last year, the first mass firings in the company’s 18-year history

Mark Zuckerberg has set the stage for another round of mass layoffs after giving thousands of workers sub-par performance reviews – as part of his ‘year of efficiency’.

Facebook parent company Meta has joined numerous other major tech firms in sacking a large percentage of its workforce, but the 11,000 people that lost their roles at the end of last year may soon be joined by droves of their former co-workers.

Meta has given around 10 percent of its employees poor job performance ratings in a recent round of reviews, according to the Wall Street Journal, a possible sign that it intends to sack another large swath of its staff.

The company’s preparations to fire thousands more employees comes as ‘tech wreck’ has swept Silicon Valley following a post-pandemic financial dip.

Despite making drastic cost-cutting measures in several areas of his company, Zuckerberg has also invested an extra $4 million to beef up his personal security.

Mark Zuckerberg has dubbed 2023 the ‘year of efficiency’, however one area he is not looking to make cuts to is his personal security bill – said to be increasing by at least $4 million this year

Meta previously laid off around 10 percent of its workforce last year, and recent moves indicate more mass firings are on the way

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has made several cost-cutting measures to save its failing bottom line, with its high-paid tech executives also set to see their bonuses slashed.

The mass layoffs come after Meta nearly doubled its staff numbers from 2019 to 2022 to over 86,000 amid increased tech usage during the pandemic.

But large sections of Meta’s employees are now set to be culled, as the company suffers from slowing ad revenue and expensive investment in the ‘metaverse’.

According to Nasdaq, the firm has seen an operating loss of almost $24 billion in the last two years due to its metaverse spending.

This has led Zuckerberg to introduce his ‘efficiency’ drive to turn around Meta’s plummeting revenue, said to have slashed $80 billion from its value last year alone.

Among his latest moves are to remove middle management to ‘flatten’ Meta’s structure and increase productivity by introducing AI into its workforce.

Zuckerberg told investors earlier this month that the staff firings are intended to ‘make decisions faster’, while AI will help Meta engineers ‘be more productive.’

But while the CEO is clearing house in Silicon Valley, he has simultaneously increased his personal security spending to $14 million for 2023, up from his usual $10 million in recent years.

His bodyguard bill, revealed in regulatory filings released Wednesday, shows his pre-tax security spending will come as part of his ballooning protection costs, which is much larger than his tech exec counterparts.

Zuckerberg’s total security-related expenses in 2021 were a combined $26.8 million, with that number set to grow even larger during his ‘year of efficiency’, according to Yahoo Finance.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning another round of ‘large-scale layoffs’ – following the first in the company’s history at the end of last year

Meta’s mass layoffs come after it made pricey investments in the ‘metaverse’

Zuckerberg will want to avoid the backlash faced by Elon Musk over his brutal Twitter layoffs

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, said the firm’s mass firings will affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions

THE FACEBOOK ‘METAVERSE’: A VIRTUAL WORLD WITHIN A WORLD

Mark Zuckerberg has said he wants people to think of Facebook not as a social media company, but a ‘metaverse’ company.

That is one that is akin to a virtual environment where people can work and play for most of their 24 hours without leaving their home.

So what exactly is the metaverse?

As Zuckerberg describes it, it’s a ‘vision’ that spans the entire tech industry, calling it the successor to the mobile internet.

‘But you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it,’ he continued.

‘And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.’

The Facebook CEO says his vision – which he has been working on for several months – would not only reach into virtual reality, but augmented reality, computers, mobile devices and game consoles as well.

The efficiency label was rolled out by the Meta-CEO during the company’s most recent earnings call earlier this month.

Alongside culling its workforce and implementing AI tools in an attempt to increase its output on a budget, Meta made another cost-cutting move recently by shuttering Instagram’s ‘live shopping’ market feature.

Around half of Meta’s hirings have never experienced a performance review at the company, and the blunt nature of the most recent cycle was described as a return of Zuckerberg’s ‘old school’ harsh style.

The CEO’s penchant for being short was depicted in his 2010 biopic The Social Network, with one former worker telling the Wall Street Journal that his latest moves are a return of ‘OG Mark’ or ‘old school Zuck’.

Following news of the poor performance reviews, a Meta spokesman said: ‘We’ve always had a goal-based culture of high performance, and our review process is intended to incentivize long-term thinking and high-quality work, while helping employees get actionable feedback.’

The 10% of workers who received poor reviews have reportedly taken their ratings as a sign they need to look for new employment opportunities.

Metas drastic changes have already seemed to pay off, however, with the firm announcing a net profit of $4.7 billion for its fourth quarter.

The report broke a massive slump for the tech giant, which had seen its quarterly returns decline three times in a row before its recent profit returns.

Zuckerberg’s firing of around 10 percent of his Meta staff came as several other major firms also released large portions of their employees.

Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the entrepreneur brutally sacked half the company’s staff, around 3,750 employees.

Other firms to suffer from ‘tech wreck’ includes Google-parent company Alphabet, which cut 12,000 employees last month, around 6 percent of its workforce.

At just seven large tech firms, the job cuts announced in recent months total nearly 70,000: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, HP and Twitter.

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