Meta officially laid off 11K employees last Wednesday. This is devastating. My thoughts are with the 11K people whose livelihoods are impacted during this uncertain time when our economy is heading into a recession. I do feel Zuck handles this unprecedented layoff with empathy and humility. In his message to Meta employees, he said:
I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.
When was the last time we heard Zuck apologize? If I remember correctly, that was years ago. I believe this is a material improvement. I know I came across super critical of the Facebook management. That’s because I have very high expectations for them. The quality of their decisions matters. Look, the quality of my decisions basically doesn’t matter. If I make a good early stage investment and the company turns out to be successful, it’s great that I help create some jobs and new products/ services. But 99+% of the credit is attributed to the founding team, not me. If I make a bad investment, I take a financial loss personally and it doesn’t really affect others. Overall, my decisions are inconsequential.
In comparison, the quality of decisions made by the Facebook management needs to be very high. A bad decision can potentially affect tens of thousands of employees, millions(?) of shareholders and advertisers and billions of users on the Facebook platforms. With Facebook’s unique corporate structure where Zuck has the voting control, the world needs Zuck to make very high quality decisions. My worry was that with such concentrated power, people around him would not push back hard enough and he is becoming out of touch. But I see a ray of hope here. Human beings make mistakes. I believe acknowledging and being aware of one’s own mistakes is the first step toward making better decisions. Layoffs are super painful but it sounds like Facebook massively over hired during the pandemic and they have to make adjustments for cultural and financial reasons. It’s a regrettable but understandable decision. The shareholder revolt after the most recent earnings seems to shake things up. The public should continue to push hard so Zuck listens and makes quality decisions. It’s in everybody’s interest that Zuck avoids similar mistakes in the future and makes good decisions to make Facebook better for its employees, its shareholders and its users.