Amid Layoffs, Meta Chief Mark Zuckerberg Tells Staff To Be “Scrappier”

Mark Zuckerberg expressed his wish for less bureaucracy at the company.

Technology giant Meta has been conducting layoffs since the last several months. Its last batch of a three-part round of layoffs began this week,, as part of a plan announced in March to eliminate 10,000 roles. Amid this, the Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg at a company-wide meeting expressed his wish for the future stability and less bureaucracy for the company to get a “scrappier place”, as per a report in the Washington Post.

“Going through restructuring and layoffs and changes like this is obviously a very difficult thing. So it’s not like we’re going to end up in exactly the place that we were before because that wasn’t my goal. I wanted to get to a scrappier place,” he said as per a call recording accessed by the outlet.

He told the employees that one of his objectives is to establish “a stronger technology company that can build better products faster”. “And the second is about improving our financial performance so we can sustain our ambitious, long-term investments and vision in what I continue to expect to be a difficult environment,” Mr Zuckerberg said. 

As per the outlet, although the tech giant does not have any other new layoffs planned, Mr Zuckerberg said that “the world is also volatile.” It is to be noted that the company intends to expand more slowly going forward, which might result in fewer layoffs when Meta decides to abandon a project in favour of a fresh one. He stated that he believes that with fewer employees, Meta would be able to streamline operations and cut down on bureaucracy.

The Meta Chief added, “It just forces us to find ways to be scrappier and get things done more efficiently. It means that there are going to be fewer environments or projects where there are too many cooks in the kitchen, which is just a kind of common complaint that I hear over and over again across the whole company.”

It is to be noted that the company has been marketing 2023 as a “year of efficiency” in an effort to improve its financial performance and achieve long-term goals. To achieve the same, it is flattening the organisation, cancelling lower priority projects and slowing hiring. As per Reuters, 
Meta has struggled with a “post-pandemic slump” in advertising spending from companies facing high inflation and rising interest rates.