Meta Asks Managers To Identify Staff For Layoffs

(RTTNews) - Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc. (FB) is planning to cut jobs as it prepares for the tough times ahead. According to reports, Maher Saba, Meta's VP for Remote Presence, has asked managers to identify people on their team who "need support" by end of day on Monday.

Saba also told managers to "move to exit" bad performers "who are unable to get on track." Based on that wording, employees who are under scrutiny will get the chance to redeem themselves, but there has been no clarification from the company on this matter.

According to sources, workers are concerned that this move will be used to create "performance improvement plans" that will result in mass layoffs. Reportedly, Saba wrote in his note: "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."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had warned employees during a Q&A session earlier this month that the company is experiencing "one of the worst downturns [it has seen] in recent history." The company has earlier said that it was hiring less this year, but it was during the Q&A, the CEO revealed that the company is cutting its target number for new engineers hires by about 30 percent.

Zuckerberg also said that Meta is going to raise expectations on its employees and giving them more aggressive goals. "I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is okay with me. Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here," he said.

The social network/metaverse company started preparing to cut costs due to weak revenue forecasts some months ago. It also decided to cut some of its metaverse initiatives.

Facebook lost daily active users in the last quarter of 2021, and while it bounced back a bit in the first quarter of this year, Meta expects revenue to drop because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The company also expects to lose around $10 billion in revenue due to the changes in Apple's privacy settings on iOS, which limits advertisers' access to the unique code that enables them to show users targeted ads.