“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg said in the letter. “I have decided to reduce the size of our team by approximately 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking some additional steps to become a more agile and efficient company by reducing discretionary spending and expanding our hiring they freeze until the 1st trimester.” Meta shares rose 4% in premarket trading. The layoffs come at a difficult time for Facebook parent Meta, which provided tepid guidance in late October for its upcoming fourth-quarter earnings that spooked investors and sent its shares plunging nearly 20 percent. Investors are concerned about Meta’s rising costs and expenses, which rose 19% year over year in the third quarter to $22.1 billion. The company’s total sales fell 4% to $27.71 billion in the quarter, while its operating income fell 46% from a year earlier to $5.66 billion. “I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here. I know this is difficult for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected.” Zuckerberg said. He said Meta is making cuts across every organization, but that hiring will be disproportionately affected since the company plans to hire fewer people in 2023. The company has extended its hiring freeze through the first quarter with a few exceptions, Zuckerberg said. “This is a sad time and there’s no way around it. To those who are leaving, I want to thank you again for everything you’ve put into this place,” he added. Affected employees will receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service, Zuckerberg said. Meta will cover health insurance for six months. Meta is heavily invested in the metaverse, which generally refers to an as-yet-undeveloped digital world that virtual reality and augmented reality headsets can access. That heavy bet has cost Meta $9.4 billion so far in 2022, and the company expects losses to “increase significantly year over year.” Zuckerberg said during a third-quarter earnings call with analysts that Meta plans to “focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas” over the next year. “This means some groups will grow substantially, but most other groups will remain flat or shrink over the next year,” Zuckerberg said. “Overall, we expect to end 2023 as either about the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.” Meta had more than 87,000 employees as of the end of September. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to employees: “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. a series of additional steps to become a more agile and efficient company by reducing discretionary spending and extending the hiring freeze through Q1. I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here. I know this is difficult for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected. How did we get here? At the start of Covid, the world quickly moved online and the boom in e-commerce led to excessive revenue growth. Many people predicted that this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not turn out as I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to previous trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and loss of advertising signal have caused our revenue to be much lower than I expected. I did it wrong and I take responsibility for it. In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. We’ve shifted more of our resources to a smaller number of high-priority development areas — like our AI discovery engine, our advertising and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse. We have reduced costs across our business, including reducing budgets, reducing perks and shrinking our real estate footprint. We are restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone will not bring our expenses into line with our revenue growth, which is why I, too, have taken the difficult decision to let people go. How will this work? There’s no good way to go about a redundancy, but we hope to get all the relevant information to you as soon as possible and then do everything we can to support you through this. Everyone will soon receive an email letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, each affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and participate in information sessions. Some of the details in the US include:
Cut off. We will pay 16 weeks of basic pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service, with no cap. PTO. We will pay for all remaining PTO time. Vesting of RSUs. All affected will receive vesting on November 15, 2022. Health Insurance. We will cover the cost of health care for people and their families for six months. Career services. We will provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads. Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you are here on a visa. There is a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, meaning everyone will have time to make plans and work towards immigration status. We have dedicated immigration experts to help guide you based on your and your family’s needs.
Outside of the US, support will be similar and we will soon follow separate procedures that take local employment laws into account. We have made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today, given the amount of access to sensitive information. However, we keep the email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say goodbye. While we’re making cuts across every organization in both the App Family and Reality Labs, some groups will be more impacted than others. Hiring will be disproportionately affected as we plan to hire fewer people next year. We are also restructuring our business teams more substantially. This does not reflect the great work these teams have done, but what we need going forward. The leaders of each team will schedule time to discuss what this means for your team over the next two days. The teammates who will be leaving us are talented and passionate and have made a significant impact on our company and community. Every single one of you has helped make Meta a success and I’m grateful for that. I am sure you will continue to do great work in other places. What other changes are we making? I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to cut other sources of cost before letting our teammates go. Overall, this will add a substantial cultural shift to the way we operate. For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to office sharing for people who already spend most of their time away from the office. We’ll be rolling out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months. We are also extending the hiring freeze through Q1 with a small number of exceptions. I will monitor our business performance, operating efficiency and other macro factors to determine whether and how much we should continue hiring at that point. This will enable us to control our cost structure in the event of a continued economic downturn. It will also put us on a path to achieve a more efficient cost structure than we recently outlined to investors. I am currently in the middle of a thorough review of our infrastructure spending. As we build our AI infrastructure, we focus on becoming even more efficient with our capabilities. Our infrastructure will continue to be a major asset for Meta and I believe we can achieve this while spending less. Essentially, we’re making all of these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure that we’re running efficiently across both our family of apps and Reality Labs. How do we move forward? This is a sad time and there is no way around it. To those leaving, I want to thank you again for all you have put into this place. We would not be where we are today without your hard work and I am grateful for your contribution. For those staying, I know this is a difficult time for you too. Not only are we saying goodbye to people we’ve worked closely with, but many of you are also feeling uncertain about the future. I want you to know that we are making these decisions to make sure our future is possible. I believe we are deeply undervalued as a company today. Billions of people use our services to connect and our communities continue to grow. Our core business is one of the most profitable ever built with huge potential ahead. And we’re leading the way in developing the technology to define the future of social connectivity and the next computing platform. We are doing historically important work. I am confident that if we work effectively, we will come out of this recession stronger and more resilient than ever. We will share more about how we will operate as an improved organization to achieve our priorities in the coming weeks. For now, I will say once again how grateful I am to those of you who are leaving for all you have done to advance our mission. Mark” Watch: Meta needs to get back to its core ad business and double down.
title: “Read Zuckerberg S Letter Announcing The Cuts " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-06” author: “Robert Rolan”
“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg said in the letter. “I have decided to reduce the size of our team by approximately 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking some additional steps to become a more agile and efficient company by reducing discretionary spending and expanding our hiring they freeze until the 1st trimester.” Meta shares rose 4% in premarket trading. The layoffs come at a difficult time for Facebook parent Meta, which provided tepid guidance in late October for its upcoming fourth-quarter earnings that spooked investors and sent its shares plunging nearly 20 percent. Investors are concerned about Meta’s rising costs and expenses, which rose 19% year over year in the third quarter to $22.1 billion. The company’s total sales fell 4% to $27.71 billion in the quarter, while its operating income fell 46% from a year earlier to $5.66 billion. “I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here. I know this is difficult for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected.” Zuckerberg said. He said Meta is making cuts across every organization, but that hiring will be disproportionately affected since the company plans to hire fewer people in 2023. The company has extended its hiring freeze through the first quarter with a few exceptions, Zuckerberg said. “This is a sad time and there’s no way around it. To those who are leaving, I want to thank you again for everything you’ve put into this place,” he added. Affected employees will receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service, Zuckerberg said. Meta will cover health insurance for six months. Meta is heavily invested in the metaverse, which generally refers to an as-yet-undeveloped digital world that virtual reality and augmented reality headsets can access. That heavy bet has cost Meta $9.4 billion so far in 2022, and the company expects losses to “increase significantly year over year.” Zuckerberg said during a third-quarter earnings call with analysts that Meta plans to “focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas” over the next year. “This means some groups will grow substantially, but most other groups will remain flat or shrink over the next year,” Zuckerberg said. “Overall, we expect to end 2023 as either about the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.” Meta had more than 87,000 employees as of the end of September. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to employees: “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. a series of additional steps to become a more agile and efficient company by reducing discretionary spending and extending the hiring freeze through Q1. I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here. I know this is difficult for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected. How did we get here? At the start of Covid, the world quickly moved online and the boom in e-commerce led to excessive revenue growth. Many people predicted that this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not turn out as I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to previous trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and loss of advertising signal have caused our revenue to be much lower than I expected. I did it wrong and I take responsibility for it. In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. We’ve shifted more of our resources to a smaller number of high-priority development areas — like our AI discovery engine, our advertising and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse. We have reduced costs across our business, including reducing budgets, reducing perks and shrinking our real estate footprint. We are restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone will not bring our expenses into line with our revenue growth, which is why I, too, have taken the difficult decision to let people go. How will this work? There’s no good way to go about a redundancy, but we hope to get all the relevant information to you as soon as possible and then do everything we can to support you through this. Everyone will soon receive an email letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, each affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and participate in information sessions. Some of the details in the US include:
Cut off. We will pay 16 weeks of basic pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service, with no cap. PTO. We will pay for all remaining PTO time. Vesting of RSUs. All affected will receive vesting on November 15, 2022. Health Insurance. We will cover the cost of health care for people and their families for six months. Career services. We will provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads. Immigration support. I know this is especially difficult if you are here on a visa. There is a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, meaning everyone will have time to make plans and work towards immigration status. We have dedicated immigration experts to help guide you based on your and your family’s needs.
Outside of the US, support will be similar and we will soon follow separate procedures that take local employment laws into account. We have made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today, given the amount of access to sensitive information. However, we keep the email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say goodbye. While we’re making cuts across every organization in both the App Family and Reality Labs, some groups will be more impacted than others. Hiring will be disproportionately affected as we plan to hire fewer people next year. We are also restructuring our business teams more substantially. This does not reflect the great work these teams have done, but what we need going forward. The leaders of each team will schedule time to discuss what this means for your team over the next two days. The teammates who will be leaving us are talented and passionate and have made a significant impact on our company and community. Every single one of you has helped make Meta a success and I’m grateful for that. I am sure you will continue to do great work in other places. What other changes are we making? I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to cut other sources of cost before letting our teammates go. Overall, this will add a substantial cultural shift to the way we operate. For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to office sharing for people who already spend most of their time away from the office. We’ll be rolling out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months. We are also extending the hiring freeze through Q1 with a small number of exceptions. I will monitor our business performance, operating efficiency and other macro factors to determine whether and how much we should continue hiring at that point. This will enable us to control our cost structure in the event of a continued economic downturn. It will also put us on a path to achieve a more efficient cost structure than we recently outlined to investors. I am currently in the middle of a thorough review of our infrastructure spending. As we build our AI infrastructure, we focus on becoming even more efficient with our capabilities. Our infrastructure will continue to be a major asset for Meta and I believe we can achieve this while spending less. Essentially, we’re making all of these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure that we’re running efficiently across both our family of apps and Reality Labs. How do we move forward? This is a sad time and there is no way around it. To those leaving, I want to thank you again for all you have put into this place. We would not be where we are today without your hard work and I am grateful for your contribution. For those staying, I know this is a difficult time for you too. Not only are we saying goodbye to people we’ve worked closely with, but many of you are also feeling uncertain about the future. I want you to know that we are making these decisions to make sure our future is possible. I believe we are deeply undervalued as a company today. Billions of people use our services to connect and our communities continue to grow. Our core business is one of the most profitable ever built with huge potential ahead. And we’re leading the way in developing the technology to define the future of social connectivity and the next computing platform. We are doing historically important work. I am confident that if we work effectively, we will come out of this recession stronger and more resilient than ever. We will share more about how we will operate as an improved organization to achieve our priorities in the coming weeks. For now, I will say once again how grateful I am to those of you who are leaving for all you have done to advance our mission. Mark” Watch: Meta needs to get back to its core ad business and double down.
