“There are people who shouldn’t be,” said Mark Zuckerberg. AFP photo
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta (formerly Facebook), has cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30% this year. And he warned his employees to prepare for a deep economic downturn: “Troubled times are coming” insured.
“If I had to bet, I’d say this could be one of the worst recessions I’ve ever seen. we have seen in recent historyZuckerberg told workers in a weekly question-and-answer session for employees, according to the Reuters news agency.
Meta lowered its target of hiring engineers in 2022 to around 6 or 7,000, from its initial plan to hire around 10,000 new engineers, Zuckerberg said.
The company confirmed its hiring suspension on general terms last month, but no exact figures have previously been reported.
In addition to reducing hiring, he said, the company was vacating some positions in response to the wear and ‘rise in temperature’ in performance management to eliminate employees unable to achieve more aggressive goals.
The harsh statements of Zuckerberg
“Realistically, there probably is many people in the company who shouldn’t be here “Zuckerberg said.
“Part of my hope of raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you may decide that this place is not for you, and that self-selection is okay. for me, “he said. .
The tech and social media company is gearing up for a leaner second half of the year as it grapples with macroeconomic pressures and impacts data privacy in its advertising business, according to an inside note seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The company must “prioritize more ruthlessly” and “operate more agile teams, badder and better executedChris Cox, chief product officer, wrote in the note, which appeared on the company’s internal discussion forum, Workplace, prior to the Q&A session.
“I must emphasize that we are in serious times here and headwinds are strong. We need to run smoothly in a slower growing environment where teams shouldn’t expect a huge influx of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote.
the memorandum “I was going to take advantage of it what we have already said publicly about the gains in the challenges we face and the opportunities we have, what we are investing more energy to address, “a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement.
The guide is the latest battlefield prediction from Meta executives, who have already moved to cut costs. in large part of the company this year in the face of slowing ad sales and user growth.
Tech companies have generally lowered their ambitions in anticipation of a possible recession in the United States, despite falling stock prices in Meta was more severe compared to competitors Apple and Google.
complicated numbers
Facebook is no longer profitable, but it is still one of the largest companies in the world. photo by Reuters
The largest social media company in the world lost about half its market value this year after Meta reported that daily active users on its flagship Facebook app saw a quarterly decline for the first time.
Its drive for austerity comes at a difficult time, coinciding with two main strategic pivots: one aimed at reshaping its social media products around the “discovery” to beat the competition from the TikTok short video app, the other an expensive long-term bet on augmented and virtual reality technology.
In his note, Cox said Meta would need to fivefold the number of graphics processing units (GPUs) in its data centers by the end of the year to support the “discovery” unit, which requires additional computing power to bring out artificial intelligence. Facebook and Instagram posts in user feeds.
Interest in Meta’s TikTok-style short video product, Reels, was growing rapidly, Cox said, and users doubled the time which has passed into Reels year after year, both in the United States and around the world.
About 80% of the growth since March has come from Facebook, he added.
User engagement with Reels could provide a key path to bolstering profits, which is why it’s important to generate ads on Reels “as fast as possible”He added.
With information from Reuters
Source: Clarin
