Mark Zuckerberg ‘terrorizes’ employee morale: Pressure to prove he’s good, trying to be busy so as not to become the next fired victim

“Raise your hand if you know who will be fired?” a Meta employee writes in the engineer’s online chat group. “Press the flame emoji if you are not satisfied.”

In response, dozens of flame symbols were sent as a way for Meta employees to vent their anger.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, declares 2023 to be “the effective year”. The effect is nowhere to be seen, just know that this corporation has laid off a series of employees after 2 record cuts. Several of Meta’s top executives also left and joined other Silicon Valley companies.

“At this point, we should be mentally prepared, that the current tough economy will continue for many years to come. High interest rates make the economy less efficient. Geopolitical instability also leads to many conflicts. More regulation will stifle growth and increase the cost of technological innovation. Given this situation, we need to be more efficient than before in order to be successful,” said Mark Zuckerberg.

As shared by former employees and a series of messages reviewed by The New York, the process of large-scale layoffs, the absence of “leaders” and concerns that Zuckerberg is going in the wrong direction have devastated employees’ morale. Meta.

They, who not long ago had the opportunity to work at one of the desirable companies, are facing an uncertain future. The company’s stock price is down 43% from its peak 19 months ago, while Zuckerberg announced Meta will have more layoffs this month. The high-risk group of technicians is in the cut.

“A lot of employees are in limbo right now,” said Erin Sumner, Global HR Manager at DeleteMe, who was fired by Facebook in November. They have to try to prove their worth to the management.”

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, isn’t the only big tech company to cut spending. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and many others have also laid off thousands of employees, office space, perks and pilot initiatives.

After all, though, Meta remains the company that suffered the most, as last year posted consecutive quarters of revenue declines – the first time since it went public in 2012.

While Meta’s competitors chase the wave of artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg is still betting big on the metaverse – an immersive online world. It is not clear whether consumers will accept this vision in the same way that the CEO expected?

“Metaverse is our slow ‘death’. Mark Zuckerberg will single-handedly kill the whole corporation with this ambition,” commented a software engineer.

The absence of many executives at headquarters is causing a lot of anxiety. A representative of Meta said that Zuckerberg, after welcoming his third baby, still regularly meets with leaders to discuss important topics.

Product Manager Naomi Gleit, one of Meta’s early employees, recently moved back to New York. Guy Rosen, Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer, moved back to Tel Aviv; while Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, is in London. Javier Olivan, Meta CEO, also travels frequently between Europe and Silicon Valley. This makes Meta employees feel the emptiness even more.

According to The New York Times, Meta employees are trying to prove their hard work. They, especially middle managers, are even asked to explain how important they are to Meta’s goals. Some are trying to make themselves look busy.

While the first two rounds of layoffs largely affected the sales and hiring departments, this month’s cuts are expected to focus on the engineering team. They created many memes joking about their last days in stay, even regularly using skull emojis in the chat group to hint at their murky future.

In parallel with the layoffs, Meta also terminated office leases across the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Fremont, Sunnyvale and Menlo Park. In February, the company announced that it would end the contract early in some regions.

This means that Meta employees will have less space, even sharing a desk.

“In order to reduce the amount of real estate, we will switch to sharing desks with people who spend most of their time working outside the office. The company will roll out more of these cost-cutting changes in the coming months,” Zuckerberg said.

In addition, perks used to attract talent, such as free laundry service, have also been cut. Many people are disappointed that there are no more cereals or snacks. Travel costs were also affected as the company cut back on non-essential business trips.

Accordingly, Meta is no longer on the list of best places to work in 2023.

Negative reviews increased after the company announced it was laying off 11,000 employees in its first round of layoffs. Most believe that Mark Zuckerberg is going in the wrong direction when pursuing the metaverse and this is considered the main reason why Meta dropped the list of 100 best places to work.

By: The New York Times, CNBC