Many years ago, as a new college graduate, I started out in what turned out to be a temporary career in retail management.
There was an insight I took away from a kindly but experienced superior. He was the first one to explain to me that a job description was in part a tool used to track and document justifiable reasons for terminating low-performing employees.
It sounds like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows that same business practice. In response to looming financial downturns, Zuckerberg is laying the groundwork for mass layoffs at Meta. Zuckerberg put managers on notice to start identifying those “who are unable to get on track” for future cuts.
As reported by Reuters on July 1, during a weekly employee question-and-answer session, Zuckerberg also delivered a message to Meta workers: It seems going woke does lead to going broke.
Discussing the situation at Meta, Zuckerberg said,” If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history.”
Zuckerberg put responsibility for layoffs squarely on employee performance. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg stated.
Zuckerberg continued, “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.”
In addition to potential future cuts of the existing workforce, Meta scaled back the hiring of new engineers in 2022 from 10,000 to between 6,000 and 7,000. Other positions are also to be left vacant.
The Meta rebrand was supposed to be a glorious expansion of Facebook, taking it beyond being just a social media platform.
Do you still use Facebook?
“We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too,” Zuckerberg boasted in October of 2021.
Zuckerkerberg claimed, “The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”
There was a backlash against the actual limited performance of the “metaverse” as compared to the hype. “Meta is beta,” observed Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers.
Tech company founder Phil Libin went further and described the metaverse as the same kind of lies versus reality that propped up the communist USSR.
Libin said, “I went to first grade in the Soviet Union. I was subjected to a lot of Soviet propaganda, and I was told as a little kid repeatedly: ‘Communism doesn’t exist yet. We haven’t built communism yet. We’re building towards communism. But it’s not communism yet. What you see around you, this horrible, horrible place, isn’t communism. We’re building towards it. It’s going to be great when it gets here.’”
To Libin, Meta set up the same kind of bait and switch. Libin scoffed, “You know, you can smell a bad idea before it’s fully built. So I don’t want to hear, ‘Oh yeah, the metaverse doesn’t exist yet. No, no, no, all this stuff, all this stupid, useless, crappy stuff that exists right now, that’s not the metaverse. The metaverse is coming — it’s coming.’”
Whatever they call themselves, Facebook or Meta, the social media giant has suffered many setbacks recently.
Zuckerberg personally lost billions when Facebook announced in February 2022 they had their first-ever quarter with a decrease in daily active users.
Also in February, a manager of community development at Meta, Jeren Miles, was filmed as part of a pedophile sting operation.
In March, Justice Clarence Thomas called for a review of the special legal protections Big Tech receives. The right court case could end up removing the immunities for civil or criminal liability Facebook currently takes advantage of.
Even as Meta prepares for rough times, perhaps the last employees who need to worry about their jobs are Facebook’s infamous “fact checkers.”
Facebook’s own attorneys admitted these fact-checkers are going by opinions, not facts. But still, Facebook uses them to censor any views which go against progressive dogma.
It’s unfortunate some tech workers will soon be unemployed. However, layoffs due to a decrease in users and influence are the direct result of Facebook’s woke bullying of the people.
Meta is in trouble, ultimately, because they do not function like a real social media platform; they act like a propaganda platform.
