No one is safe from the permanent efficiency measures that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now taking, not even the upper echelons of the company.
As of last year, Meta employed an army of 300 vice presidents divided into five levels of seniority who are now the main targets of Zuck’s efficiency cuts. Interested in trade Citing three people familiar with the company. In previous years, there were half as many vice presidents at Meta, Business Insider noted, and Zuckerberg reportedly wants to trim the list to 250.
The VP massacre comes after Zuckerberg first declared 2023 the “Year of Efficiency” last February, leading to more than 20,000 layoffs that year, according to BI. Zuckerberg later made the changes permanent after seeing employees “working better and faster,” and promised a “leaner” operating structure that included a flatter hierarchy.
To help weed out lagging vice presidents, Meta relies on mid-year performance reviews and formal annual performance reviews that are typically conducted in the first quarter. Vice presidents who fall short of their peers through a process called “stack ranking” are more likely to get the axe.
Vice presidents are also under the microscope of their bosses, who are required by company rules to rate 10% to 12.5% of their reports as underperforming. This tactic can result in these employees being placed on a performance improvement plan and then laid off.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment luck to a Facebook post Zuckerberg made in February, where he detailed Meta’s earnings and added that his “Year of Efficiency” changes would become a “permanent part of the way we work.”
Zuckerberg’s productivity metrics stand in stark contrast to his meta-growth of between 20% and 30% each previous year. But since Meta began layoffs last year, it hasn’t stopped, and other big companies including Google, Microsoft, and Tesla have also joined in. Overall, more than 250,000 tech employees were laid off last year, according to Layoffs. For your information.
Zuckerberg’s risk of making deep job cuts has been rewarded by investors over the past year. Some analysts have praised CEO efforts, including those of MoffettNathanson, which explicitly stated in a research note books: “Mr. Zuckerberg is a capitalist after all.