Mark Zuckerberg questions telecommuting: what he said about the efficiency of Meta’s engineers

Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that, according to internal analysis of the company’s data, the engineers who initially joined the organization face to face worked best compared to those who work remotely.

“Our initial analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who joined Meta in person and then moved remotely or stayed onsite had a best average performance compared to people who joined remotely,” Zuckerberg said.

This message came in a long memo from 2,200 words sent to workers in which, in a complementary way, announced the dismissal of 10,000 new employeesthus reaching 21 thousand positions within a few months.

This same data also indicates that engineers who are “early in their careers” do best when they work one-on-one and collaborate with colleagues at least three days a week.

To soften these claims, Zuckerberg explained that he believes being in the same physical space with colleagues helps strengthen relationships and generate cohesion and trust among team members.

And while the entrepreneur doesn’t come to any definitive conclusions or propose changes, he explains that they are investigating the matter further to find a model that allows people to build “the connections necessary to work effectively.”

However, this performance data managed by Meta suggests that the company will reduce its employee options in the near term.

“This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it’s even easier to build trust in person and that these relationships help us work more effectively.”

At another point he argued that Meta is fully committed to distributed work. “That means we’re also willing to continually refine our model to make it work as efficiently as possible.”

Last spasms of the pandemic

The workplace of the employees is also becoming increasingly important at Meta. The company adopted the work hybrid and distance during the pandemic, giving many employees the freedom to choose where they do their jobs.

While he said the company is committed to enabling both remote and hybrid work, Zuckerberg noted that Meta has noted that some employees could benefit from more time with colleagues.

“Last year was a humble wake-up call,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The world economy has changed, competitive pressures have increased and our growth has slowed considerably,” he said.

To this we must add that Meta is reducing its real estate footprint, while doubling down on its ambitions with technologies related to the metaverse, which at first glance would suggest that it expands the possibilities of telecommuting.

However, it seems the company wants people to come to the office in person more frequently than they currently do.

The truth is that, for the time being, Meta does not plan to introduce specific requirements in this regard, but that could change as other tech companies reevaluate their approach.