Stressed-out Meta employees demand answers from Mark Zuckerberg as tech giant cuts another 10,000 jobs

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to play defense during a company video call Thursday when staff demanded to know how they could trust him after another round of layoffs.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has confirmed that it will cut 10,000 jobs in the coming months, on top of the 11,000 that were cut in December, cutting its staff by another 13 percent.

Zuckerberg fielded “anonymous” questions from several employees during a meeting, including one from a worker who asked how employees could “trust leadership decisions after two rounds of layoffs.”

He responded, “I guess the way you’re going to assess whether you trust me and want to work at this company is whether we’re being successful and making progress toward the overall state of the goals.”

The layoffs come after Zuckerberg previously warned Meta employees that 2023 would be an “efficiency year.”

“Whether you think you basically get a good context for me on what we’re trying to do and that I’m being honest and giving you my best expectation that I can of things,” Zuckerberg added, according to Well-informed person.

Another employee asked him what had changed since November, when Zuckerberg claimed the first round of layoffs would prevent more layoffs like the ones that occurred earlier this week.

Zuckerberg said that while it was a fair question, he asked for the right to develop his views amid a “volatile” economy.

“I guess we’re not the only company going through multiple rounds of restructuring or things like that. I’m sure there will be a lot more in the long run,” Zuckerberg said.

He also said he understood the job cuts had increased employee stress levels, but promised the company was doing everything it could to be transparent.

Those affected by the layoffs will be people working on lower-priority projects and those providing additional layers of management, according to Zuckerberg.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.

Combined, the cuts represent just under a quarter of the company’s 86,000-person workforce. Zuckerberg made the announcement on his Facebook page, sharing the internal memo he sent to employees.

In the US, recruiting teams will be the first to lose jobs. Affected tech teams will lose jobs at the end of April, and business branches will see job cuts in May.

Zuckerberg confirmed that international layoffs will also happen, but it will take longer.

“Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by about 10,000 people and close about 5,000 additional open positions that we haven’t hired yet.

‘This will be difficult and there is no way around it. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been a part of our success,” she said.

The layoffs are part of a broader strategy to make the company more “lean and agile.”

Thinner is better. Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have moved faster. In hindsight, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects,” he said.

He specified that the removal of management layers had resulted in faster efficiency.

The market reacted favorably to the news: shares rose 5.5 percent after the announcement.

In the future, Meta will have around 60,000 employees.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg pointed to the disastrous fall in tech stocks as one of the reasons for the decline.

‘Last year was a sobering wake-up call. The global economy changed, competitive pressures increased, and our growth slowed considerably.

‘We slashed budgets, we reduced our real estate footprint, and we made the difficult decision to lay off 13% of our workforce.

‘At this point, I think we need to prepare for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.

‘Higher interest rates lead to the economy running more efficiently, greater geopolitical instability leads to greater volatility, and greater regulation leads to slower growth and higher innovation costs.

‘Given this outlook, we will need to operate more efficiently than our previous downsizing to ensure success.

“Faced with this new reality, most companies will reduce their long-term vision and investments,” he said.

Meta’s woes are in line with a broader round of layoffs in the tech industry, where growth once seemed invincible.

Microsoft has also launched a third round of layoffs that are part of its previously announced 10,000 job cuts.

Twitter staff have been rocked by brutal layoffs and chaos unleashed by Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of the company.