Some Meta employees could lose their jobs as the company prepares for leaner times ahead. According to The Information, Maher Saba, Meta's VP for Remote Presence, has instructed managers to identify people on their team who "need support" by end of day on Monday. He also told the managers to "move to exit" poor performers "who are unable to get on track." Based on that wording, employees who get singled out will get the chance to redeem themselves, but since the company didn't respond to the publication's request for comment, it's not entirely clear what that means.
A person familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that workers are concerned that this will be used to create "performance improvement plans" that end up resulting in mass layoffs. Saba also reportedly wrote in his note: "If a direct report is coasting or is a low performer, they are not who we need; they are failing this company. As a manager, you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative for Meta."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned employees during a Q&A session earlier this month that the company is experiencing "one of the worst downturns [it has seen] in recent history." It previously said that it's slowing hiring this year, but it was at that session when Meta revealed that it's slashing its target number for new engineers hires by about 30 percent. Zuckerberg also announced at the time that Meta is going to raise expectations on its employees and giving them more aggressive goals. "I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is okay with me. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," he said.
The social network/metaverse company started preparing to cut costs due to weak revenue forecasts a few months ago, even going as far as to axe some of its metaverse initiatives. Facebook lost daily active users in the last quarter of 2021, and while it bounced back a bit in the first quarter of this year, Meta expects a revenue drop in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The company also expects to lose $10 billion in revenue due to the changes in Apple's privacy settings on iOS, which limits advertisers' access to the unique code that enables them to show users targeted ads.