Facebook is asking its engineering managers to identify and eliminate their underperforming employees as the company seeks to contain costs during an economic downturn in the booming tech industry.
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Facebook engineering chief Maher Saba sent a memo to managers on Friday urging them to identify anyone on their team who “needs support” and flag them in an internal human resources system by 5 p.m. Pacific time, Monday.
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“If a direct report is coasting or performing poorly, we don’t need them; they are failing this business,” Saba wrote. “As a manager, you can’t allow someone to be net neutral or negative for Meta.”
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The memo, which was first reported by The News, is one of several messages from Facebook executives warning of the need to cut costs as the social media giant seeks to shore up its digital advertising business. stagnant and reinventing itself as a virtual reality-powered device. maker. His arrival has shocked many employees, who worry about potential layoffs, reduced bonuses and fewer promotions.
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“The reaction from people who have seen this is that this will be used to create a bunch [of] ‘performance improvement plans’ that will lead to mass layoffs,” said a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations.
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Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Amid global chaos, the tech industry takes a rare fall
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Facebook, which last year rebranded itself as Meta, has spent years raking in digital advertising dollars by becoming the go-to platform for businesses of all sizes to tailor their marketing campaigns to niche audiences. At first, Facebook and other social media companies took advantage of the pandemic as more advertisers shifted their marketing dollars online to reach customers who are spending more time at home.
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The company’s share price has fallen nearly 52% since the start of the year as it faces threats to its social media activities. Apple imposed new privacy rules on app makers on its iPhone devices, which aimed to reduce the collection of data about its users. Apps such as Facebook have been forced to ask users if they want their activity tracked across the internet for targeted advertising – a request many users have denied.
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In the last three months of last year, Facebook announced that it had lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history, sending its stock price plummeting. While the social media’s user growth figures held steady earlier this year, company executives warned it faced intense competition for user attention from social upstarts. such as TikTok.
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To compete in the crowded market, Facebook is aggressively promoting its short-form video service known as Reels. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg argued that the company would be able to monetize the product the same way it once did for its News Feed. Facebook is also trying to stake its future on creating the metaverse — a term used to describe immersive virtual environments accessible through virtual and augmented reality.
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Facebook loses users for the first time in its history
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This month, Zuckerberg told employees on a company-wide call that not everyone meets company standards and that some may want to leave voluntarily as she faces an impending economic downturn, according to media reports. Zuckerberg told employees they would cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30% this year, according to Reuters.
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“If I had to bet, I’d say this could be one of the worst downturns we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told workers. “In reality, there’s probably a bunch of people in the business who shouldn’t be here.”
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Facebook’s belt-tightening mirrors the cost-cutting happening elsewhere in Silicon Valley. After a decade of exuberance, venture capitalists and established tech companies are cutting investment and laying off workers. More than 300 start-ups have laid off more than 50,023 workers since the start of the year, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks cuts in the tech industry.
