Zuckerberg’s Layoff Letter Walked Out Of The Onion

For the third time in as many months, I’m compelled to report that Mark Zuckerberg is laying off thousands of workers at Meta.

I readily (and frequently) acknowledge the imperative for mainstream news outlets of competing for “scoops” and reporting potentially meaningful news as soon as it’s possible to report it — that’s part of what journalists do, after all.

That said, when you’re me (so, definitely not a journalist, or at least definitely not one by training), journalistic front-running can be a source of irritation, as it forces me to weigh in on the same story multiple times, typically once when it’s initially tipped, again when it’s “confirmed” (with scare quotes) by a second media outlet and then one more time when it’s actually confirmed (without scare quotes).

Investors have known that Zuckerberg planned to cut more jobs since he touted a “year of efficiency” on the Q4 call. Contrary to The Washington Post‘s spin from late last month, everyone understood that Meta’s November layoffs weren’t the end of the story.

As discussed at some length in “Zuckerberg To Cut ‘Thousands’ More Jobs,” the Post‘s reporting was an example of a situation I desperately wish liberal media outlets wouldn’t put me in — namely, having to call their stories disingenuous, when I’m avowedly progressive-leaning. I don’t do well with disingenuous reporting, no matter where it comes from, and the Post intimated that Zuckerberg promised not to cut more jobs. Not only did he not promise that, he said repeatedly that Meta’s cost-cutting wasn’t done. If you couldn’t read between those lines, I don’t know what to tell you.

Anyway, Meta is cutting jobs again. Just like I said they would while editorializing around last quarter’s results, and consistent with subsequent reporting from anybody and everybody.

I wasn’t going to pen yet another article on the same layoffs, but Zuckerberg’s letter was so accidentally (and tragically) hilarious, I couldn’t help myself.

Mark’s effort to put a positive spin on the elimination of 10,000 jobs (and, notably in the macro context, 5,000 job openings) was predictably cringeworthy. Zuckerberg surely doesn’t understand why, though, because he’s an automaton (figuratively, as far we know) and no amount of overwriting can hide it. So, you get passages like this one, from Tuesday’s letter:

Our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more. I’ve tried to be open about all the work that’s underway, and while I know many of you are energized by this, I also recognize that the idea of upcoming org changes creates uncertainty and stress. My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.

Some of that is indecipherable for people not steeped in the vernacular of Silicon Valley. I’m sure “garbage collect” is part of the lexicon in that realm, but if you’re cutting 10,000 jobs, and you’re not Waste Management or Republic Services, you really want to keep the word “garbage” out of the announcement.

Zuckerberg apologized (sort of) to “talented and passionate colleagues” who’ve “dedicated themselves” to Meta’s “mission.” He said he’s “grateful” for that. At one point, he described the layoffs as job “removals” — a lot like “garbage collection,” I suppose.

Here’s how Mark described the “removal” process:

Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects and reducing our hiring rates. With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted. We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.

Much as it pains me to say this, that’s bullish for investors (and, as some of you will doubtlessly point out, “investors” is a category which, as of last October, includes me).

Also bullish were Mark’s repeated references to cost cuts and efficiency. He’s serious about this. So serious, in fact, that 2023 expenses could come in as “low” as $86 billion. The new range is below the range tipped last month, which was itself a marked cut from the projection delivered during the company’s Q3 call, which spooked investors.

There were too many (lamentable) punchlines in Zuckerberg’s letter to reasonably enumerate, but one that stuck out was the juxtaposition between his laudatory remarks around in-person interactions and the fact that a big part of Meta’s 2022 selloff was attributable to concerns that Zuckerberg had gotten lost in a virtual reality fever dream.

“In-person time helps build relationships and get more done,” he said, before delivering a comically robotic rationale for that wholly uncontroversial claim:

Our early analysis… suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.

If you’re not laughing by now, then you may be Mark Zuckerberg. The contention that it’s “easier to build trust in person” and that interpersonal relationships (real ones, not virtual ones) help humans work better together isn’t a “hypothesis.” And it damn sure doesn’t “require further study.” It’s the basic underlying principle that allowed our species to conquer the world and lord it over every other living creature on the planet.

For Zuckerberg, though, the jury’s still out. More data is needed. The idea that in-person interactions help humans work more efficiently is something that needs to be studied for a while longer before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

Until Meta’s data analytics department produces a verdict, Mark said he “encourages” all Meta employees “to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.” You know, just in case there’s something to this whole in-person thing.

Meanwhile, Reality Labs will presumably continue to burn billions developing ways for people to get around in-person interactions. And if that effort becomes too expensive, that’s ok, because Zuckerberg can always fire a few thousand people to pacify impatient shareholders. Shareholders like me.