Facebook, now Meta Platform’s main social media subsidiary, may begin eliminating low-performing staff from its ranks in a bid to cut costs amid poor performance and the global financial downturn, it was revealed in a leaked memo via the Washington Post on Monday.
According to the Friday memo from Maher Saba, Facebook’s Engineering Lead, the Menlo Park-based enterprise to track any team members requesting support and report them to a human resources system, reports said.
Saba wrote in the memo as first reported by The Information,
“If a direct report is coasting or is a low performer, they are not who we need; they are failing this company. As a manager, you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative for Meta.”
The news comes as Meta Platforms continues to struggle with diminishing returns on investment after it heavily invested in its Reality Labs extended reality (XR) division, namely after its rebrand in October last year.
Meta has not offered comment on the matter, but an anonymous source speaking on the matter said,
“The reaction from folks that have seen this is that this will be used to create a bunch [of] ‘performance improvement plans’ that will result in mass layoffs”
Meta’s stock prices have also plummeted over 50 percent after Apple slapped companies with new privacy rules for its iPhone devices to provide greater control over advertising preferences, triggering significant losses for the headset and social media giant.
Further headaches for Meta come amid fierce competition from rival firm ByteDance, the parent company of Pico Interactive and TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive and Founder of Meta Platforms, also said his firm planned to cut back on hiring by roughly 30 percent, Reuters reported in July.
He said in a statement at the time,
“If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here”
The news comes as Meta attempts to scale up its services as it aims to launch a wave of competitive solutions, including a new cryptocurrency payment platform and its Project Cambria mixed reality (MR) headset, despite its augmented reality (AR).
Meta has also faced intense scrutiny after shareholders recently urged the company to step up efforts to protect its online users. Users addressed concerns after the death of a young woman using one of its social media apps and a subsequent virtual assault during a beta trial run of the firm’s Meta Horizon Worlds platform, triggering British lawmakers to enact an Online Safety Bill.
