Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a short message to the company's employees as he tells them to either step up or resign. This comes amid the economic downturn that has affected the shares of tech companies.
Mark Zuckerberg's Message to Employees
According to The Independent, in a work Q&A on June 30, the Facebook founder told employees to brace for downturns.
The company plans to reduce hiring and introduce more challenging employee efficiency targets.
Zuckerberg admitted that the new expectations could result in worker turnover, and the Meta executives are "okay with it."
During the assembly, the Meta CEO said that there are a "bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be there." He added that by raising the expectations and having more aggressive goals, he hopes that some employees will decide that the company is not for them and resign in their own will.
Also Read : Facebook's Parent, Meta, Requires Employees to Get COVID-19 Booster Shot for Office Work Return
Meta initially planned on hiring around 10,000 engineers in 2022, in accordance with The New York Times. Now, the company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has lowered the targets from around 6,000 to 7,000.
Despite the financial challenges, Meta does not plan to lay off any employees. But the corporate groups must make do with fewer sources.
The company's CPO Chris Cox added that Meta should be able to "operate leaner, meaner, and better executing teams."
Cox wrote in a memo that was published by Telegraph that the company is in "serious times and the headwinds are fierce."
The company plans to execute its jobs flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, and teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets.
Budget Issues in the Tech Industry
Meta executives are already trimming costs across the company in the first few months of 2022 due to the slowing ad sales and user growth.
Several tech companies across the sector have scaled back their ambitions in anticipation of a possible recession in the United States, although the slide in stock price at Meta has been more severe compared to its competitors, Google and Apple.
According to CNBC, the social media company lost half of its market value in 2022 after Meta reported that daily active users on Facebook had experienced a decline for the first time in years.
The decline in user percentage comes when the company is re-fashioning its app around "discovery" to beat back TikTok and investing in expensive long-term bets on augmented and virtual reality technology.
Cox added in his memo that Meta would need to increase fivefold the number of graphic processing units (GPUs) in its data centers by the end of 2022 to support the "discovery" push, which needs more computing power for artificial intelligence to surface popular posts from across Instagram and Facebook in users' feeds.
Interest in Meta's TikTok-style short video product called Reels was growing fast, with users doubling the time spent on Reels every year, both in the United States and worldwide.
Around 80% of the growth since March came from Facebook, according to Cox.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster