“If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told workers in a weekly employee Q&A session, audio of which was heard by Reuters.
“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said. The company must “prioritise more ruthlessly” and “operate leaner, meaner, better executing teams,” Chief Product Officer Chris Cox wrote in the memo, which appeared on the company’s internal discussion forum Workplace before the Q&A.
The guidance is the latest rough forecast to come from Meta executives, who already moved to trim costs across much of the company this year in the face of slowing ad sales and user growth. Its austerity drive comes at a tricky time, coinciding with two major strategic pivots: one aimed at re-fashioning its social media products around “discovery” to beat back competition from short-video app TikTok, the other an expensive long-term bet on augmented and virtual reality technology.