Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘year of efficiency’ now means another 10,000 layoffs and a hiring freeze on 5,000 more jobs
Fortune (via Yahoo Finance)
Memo to Meta employees, published on Meta's newsroom and Zuckerberg's Facebook page
“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. ... building AI tools to help engineers write better code faster, enabling us to automate workloads over time”
Mark Zuckerberg14 March 2023- What you'll lose5/5
About 10,000 jobs and 5,000 open roles.
- Condescension2/5
'There's no way around that.'
- Tone-deafness3/5
The 'Year of Efficiency'; investors cheered.
- Doom1/5
AI to automate engineering work over time.
- Hypocrisy0/5
None.
Full time11 pitchforksof a possible 25
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The occasion
Memo to Meta employees, published on Meta's newsroom and Zuckerberg's Facebook page, 14 March 2023.
Context
In a note to staff published the same day, Zuckerberg set out the next stage of the 'Year of Efficiency': a second round of cuts of about 10,000 jobs, 5,000 open roles closed, and AI tools to automate engineering work. Investors cheered and the share price rose; employees reacted differently.
Crowd reaction
Critical commentary
Mild and indirect. When the cuts began in April, Fortune (citing Reuters) reported employees venting in internal chats: 'You’ve shattered the morale and confidence in leadership of many high performers who work with intensity. Why should we stay at Meta?' The same Fortune/Yahoo piece of 14 March notes that investors received the efficiency push well. The reaction is to the layoffs the memo announced rather than to a single line.
- Primary source, blog
- Meta: Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency
- Fortune (via Yahoo Finance): Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘year of efficiency’ now means another 10,000 layoffs and a hiring freeze on 5,000 more jobs
- NBC News (CNBC): Meta begins another round of layoffs as Zuckerberg’s ‘year of efficiency’ continues
- Fortune: Meta employees accuse Mark Zuckerberg of shattering the ‘morale and confidence in leadership of many high performers’
- Where the exact words are printed