AM I NEXT? IS THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL AT meta / FACEBOOK? (04/21/23)

APRIL 21, 2023 — ANOTHER 4,000 EMPLOYEES TARGETED

In the second round of layoffs, the company has instructed employees to work from home to avoid the conflict with in-face firing. Ostensibly to “provide dignity, confidentiality, and comfort to our colleagues,”

The company immediately cut 4,000 jobs — part of its plan to eventually lay off 10,000 employees, maybe more.

Meta told its North America-based employees to work from home Wednesday as it began a second round of layoffs that will

MARCH 15, 2023 — ANOTHER 10,000 EMPLOYEES TARGETED

This is the announcement of the second 10,000 reduction in force.

Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency

March 14, 2023

Mark Zuckerberg just shared the following with Meta employees:

Meta is building the future of human connection, and today I want to share some updates on our Year of Efficiency that will help us do that. The goals of this work are: (1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long term vision.

Our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more. I’ve tried to be open about all the work that’s underway, and while I know many of you are energized by this, I also recognize that the idea of upcoming org changes creates uncertainty and stress. My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.

Here’s the timeline you should expect: over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates. With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted. We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.

This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.

After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group. Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model. We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.

As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision. I understand that this update may still feel surprising, so I’d like to lay out some broader context on our vision, our culture, and our operating philosophy.

FEBRUARY 20, 2023 — YOU’VE BEEN ZUCKED!

It appears that Mark Zuckerberg is continuing his “Year of Efficiency,” with thousands of Meta employees receiving “subpar” performance reviews.

According to a company spokesperson, “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,”

According to Zuckerberg, “We’re working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive,”

FEBRUARY 13, 2023 — BEYOND 11,000 LAYOFFS?

It appears that Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, may be planning to lay off even more people in March 2023 after its recent job cut that affected nearly 13 percent of its workforce. Performance reviews are underway, and job uncertainty is at a fever pitch.

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 — 11,000+ JOBS TARGETED

In a letter to employees, Mark Zuckerberg wrote…

Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.

I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.

How did we get here?

At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.

In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas — like our AI discovery engine, our ads and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse. We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint. We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go.

How will this work?

There is no good way to do a layoff, but we hope to get all the relevant information to you as quickly as possible and then do whatever we can to support you through this.

Everyone will get an email soon letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, every affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and join information sessions.

Some of the details in the US include:

Severance. We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap.

PTO. We’ll pay for all remaining PTO time.

RSU vesting. Everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting.

Health insurance. We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months.

Career services. We’ll provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.

Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need.

Outside the US, support will be similar, and we’ll follow up soon with separate processes that take into account local employment laws.

We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive information. But we’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell.

While we’re making reductions in every organization across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, some teams will be affected more than others. Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially. This is not a reflection of the great work these groups have done, but what we need going forward. The leaders of each group will schedule time to discuss what this means for your team over the next couple of days.

The teammates who will be leaving us are talented and passionate, and have made an important impact on our company and community. Each of you have helped make Meta a success, and I’m grateful for it. I’m sure you’ll go on to do great work at other places.

What other changes are we making?

I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go. Overall, this will add up to a meaningful cultural shift in how we operate. For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to desk sharing for people who already spend most of their time outside the office. We’ll roll out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months.

We’re also extending our hiring freeze through Q1 with a small number of exceptions. I’m going to watch our business performance, operational efficiency, and other macroeconomic factors to determine whether and how much we should resume hiring at that point. This will give us the ability to control our cost structure in the event of a continued economic downturn. It will also put us on a path to achieve a more efficient cost structure than we outlined to investors recently.

I’m currently in the middle of a thorough review of our infrastructure spending. As we build our AI infrastructure, we’re focused on becoming even more efficient with our capacity. Our infrastructure will continue to be an important advantage for Meta, and I believe we can achieve this while spending less.

Fundamentally, we’re making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we’re operating efficiently across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs.

How do we move forward?

This is a sad moment, and there’s no way around that. To those who are leaving, I want to thank you again for everything you’ve put into this place. We would not be where we are today without your hard work, and I’m grateful for your contributions.

To those who are staying, I know this is a difficult time for you too. Not only are we saying goodbye to people we’ve worked closely with, but many of you also feel uncertainty about the future. I want you to know that we’re making these decisions to make sure our future is strong.

I believe we are deeply underestimated as a company today. Billions of people use our services to connect, and our communities keep growing. Our core business is among the most profitable ever built with huge potential ahead. And we’re leading in developing the technology to define the future of social connection and the next computing platform. We do historically important work. I’m confident that if we work efficiently, we’ll come out of this downturn stronger and more resilient than ever.

We’ll share more on how we’ll operate as a streamlined organization to achieve our priorities in the weeks ahead. For now, I’ll say one more time how thankful I am to those of you who are leaving for everything you’ve done to advance our mission.

Mark

OCTOBER 22, 2022 — META CONTRACTOR LAYS OFF 114 EMPLOYEES

San Jose, California-based Astreya Partners is laying off all 144 employees, including 133 “inventory technicians” who worked at the Meta facility located in Newark, New Jersey. Separations are scheduled for November 14, 2022. The reason for the layoffs was a contract cancellation.

OCTOBER 7, 2022 — RUMORS THAT 15% OF THE WORKFORCE (12,000 EMPLOYEES) MAY BE AT RISK

Media reports suggest a major reduction in force. It is alleged that CEO Mark Zuckerberg “told directors across the company they should select at least 15% of their teams to be labeled as ‘needs support’ in an internal review process.”

”This selective restructuring hints at a possible layoff of about 15% of the workforce, or about 12,000 employees.”

“‘I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing, it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,’ Zuckerberg told employees during the weekly Q&A session.”

Selected employees are likely to be placed in the company’s PIP ((performance improvement plan) and then discharged. Typically, underperforming, employees are given 30 days to find a new position at the company or else leave. Layoffs would be labeled as “quiet layoffs” because the decision was driven by a review process rather than specific economic conditions.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 — 120 JANITORS WERE LAID OFF

The company has acknowledged the separation of 130 unionized janitorial staff team members located in the Bay area including the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters. Approximately 30 were able to slot into other positions, bringing the total to 90. Meta, the parent company, employs SBM Management Services, a third-party sub-contractor to manage support staff personnel.

Approximately 193 janitors and other service workers were retained by SBM, the vendor that directly employs them.

AUGUST 20, 2022 — 60 RANDOM CONTRACTOR LAYOFFS CHOSEN BY ALGORITHM

60 content moderator contractors hired by Meta through the Austin, Texas office of Accenture were algorithmically selected for termination on September 2, 2022.

Will this be the new layoff methodology to insulate companies from termination lawsuits?

JULY 15, 2022 — Original post…

Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, an online social media and social networking service owned by Meta Platforms, has implemented a cost reduction initiative in response to slower revenue growth and inflation concerns.

The company plans to stop adding entry-level engineers and stop or slow hiring most mid-level and senior-level roles. Anticipating a severe downturn, the company has announced plans to reduce its engineering headcount by 30 this year.

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "If I had to bet, I'd say this might be one of the worst downturns that we've seen in recent history. The company's plan to hire engineers had been cut to 6,000 to 7,000 from an original target of 10,000, and some jobs will be left unfilled, pressuring managers to weed out underperforming workers.

Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me."

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?