San Francisco — Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of a company formerly known as Facebook, called his top adjutant on social networks to a last-minute meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area this month. Agenda: A “workason” to discuss a roadmap for improving the main Facebook app, including improvements that change the way users browse services.
Weeks ago, Mr Zuckerberg sent a message to executives about the overhaul, putting pressure on them to speed up and perform their work, people with knowledge of the matter said. Some executives who had to read the slide deck on page 122 about the changes were beginning to sweat with an extraordinary level of intensity, they said.
Facebook leaders jumped in from around the world for the summit, people said, and Zuckerberg and the group scrutinized each slide. Within a few days, the team announced an update to its Facebook app to make it more competitive with its top rival, TikTok.
Zuckerberg is setting a constant pace to take the $ 450 billion company, renamed Meta, to a new level. In recent months, he has made it clear that he will curb spending, reduce benefits, remodel leadership teams, and reduce poorly performing employees. Those who are not on board are welcome, he said. The manager sent a note to convey the seriousness of the approach — the one shared with The New York Times had the title “Working with Increased Strength”.
Zuckerberg, 38, is trying to move his company away from the roots of social networking, focusing on the so-called Metaverse immersive and so far theoretical world. Throughout Silicon Valley, he and other executives who built what many call Web 2.0 (a more social and app-focused version of the Internet) said the platform was a privacy stumbling block, toxic content, and false. After being plagued by information, he rethinks and overturns his original vision.
This moment is reminiscent of other companies’ bets, such as when Netflix shut down its DVD mail business in the last decade to focus on streaming. But Zuckerberg is doing these moves because Meta’s back hits the wall. The company is looking at the barrel of a global recession. Competitors such as TikTok, YouTube and Apple are declining.
And success is not guaranteed. Revenues have slowed in recent months as Meta’s profits have declined, the company has spent generously on the Metaverse, and the economic slowdown has hit the advertising business. Its inventory plummeted.
“When Mark is so focused on something, it’s all in the hands of the company,” said Katie, a former Facebook policy director and founder of Anchor Change, a consulting firm that addresses technology and democracy issues. Harbus says. “The team quickly stops doing other work and shifts to the problem at hand. The pressure to move quickly to show progress is strong.”
Meta declined to comment. The company plans to report quarterly results on Wednesday.
Zuckerberg’s meta relocation began in earnest last year when he began relocating the lieutenant’s bench.
In October, he promoted his longtime friend and colleague Andrew Bosworth, known as Boz, to Chief Technology Officer, leading the Metaverse hardware effort.he Promotion Other supporters, including the new Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan. Nick Clegg became president of global affairs. And Guy Rosen, who has taken on the new role of Chief Information Security Officer.
In June, Zuckerberg’s 14-year second-placed Sheryl Sandberg said he would resign this fall. She spent more than a decade building Facebook’s advertising system, but she wasn’t very interested in doing the same for Metaverse, says people familiar with her plans. I did.
Zuckerberg has moved thousands of workers to different teams for the Metaverse and trained them to focus on ambitious projects such as hardware glasses, wearables, and new operating systems for those devices. rice field.
“This is an existential bet on where people will connect, express and identify with each other over the next decade,” said a longtime technical executive. Books about the Metaverse.. “If you have cash, engineers, users, and the belief to swing to it, you should.”
But the effort is definitely not cheap. Facebook’s Reality Labs division, which builds augmented reality and virtual reality products, has lowered its balance sheet. Hardware units lost nearly $ 3 billion in the first quarter alone.
At the same time, Meta is working on a privacy change from Apple that is hampering its ability to measure the effectiveness of ads on the iPhone. China-owned video app TikTok stole young viewers from Meta’s core apps such as Instagram and Facebook. These challenges are in line with the brutal macroeconomic environment in which Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have been forced to freeze or delay adoption.
So Zuckerberg pushed his company overdrive with a strong message: it’s time to do more with less.
This month, Meta said it plans to reduce its annual engineering recruitment target from 10,000 to 12,000 to 6,000, leaving some recruitment jobs vacant. The once-heavy budget has been cut, and managers are told not to expect an unlimited number of teams. In a memo last month, Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, said the economic environment needed “a slimmer, more mean, better executive team.”
At a contemporaneous employee meeting, Zuckerberg said he knew that not everyone would participate in the change. It was okay, he told the employee.
“Some people may think this place isn’t for me, but self-selection is fine for me,” Zuckerberg said. “In reality, there are many people in the company who shouldn’t be here.”
Another memo circulated internally among workers this month was titled “Strengthen and Operate.” In a memo, Meta Vice President said managers should “start thinking about everyone on the team and the value they are adding.”
“If your direct reports are coasting or have poor performance, they are not the ones we need. They are failing at this company,” the memo said. “As a manager, I can’t allow anyone to be net neutral or negative to Meta.”
Zuckerberg focuses on the efforts of those who stay in areas he believes will be most beneficial to Meta in the long run. According to Cox’s notes, these include higher revenues from Metaverse, messaging, Instagram reels, privacy, artificial intelligence, and products that currently bring little or no.Investment priorityFor the company later this year.
Meta has withdrawn in some areas, including poor-selling products such as Portal video chat devices. These products are no longer available to consumers and are targeted to businesses instead.Bosworth also stopped developing a dual-camera smartwatch, although the company is working on it, according to people with knowledge of the problem. Other prototypes..Bloomberg report Old smartwatch.
A few days after “Work Asson” with Facebook Manager this month, Zuckerberg Posted an update Keep an eye on future changes to the app on his Facebook profile. Facebook emulates TikTok’s behavior and begins pushing people into more video-rich feeds with more suggested content.
Meta has invested heavily in video and discovery with the aim of enhancing artificial intelligence and improving the “discovery algorithm” that suggests compelling content without the user having to work to find it. rice field.
So far, Facebook has tested major product updates with a few English-speaking audiences to see how they work before they are rolled out more widely. But this time, 2.93 billion people around the world who use social networking apps will receive updates at the same time.
According to some meta-employees, this is a sign of what Zuckerberg means for the business.
