Facing a new round of massive layoffs in Meta, after those that already occurred in November, the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, has given information that may have many of its engineers worried. Specifically, to those workers who started in Meta working remotely and not in their offices.
According to the Facebook creator, Meta’s internal data analysis suggests that engineers who initially joined the company in person they performed better than those who did it from a distance from the beginning.
He also suggested that younger engineers, or more accurately those “at the beginning of their career” working, perform best when working with peers in person for at least three days a week.
If we talk about the fact that it is lethal when giving this information, it is because yesterday the manager also said that This year the company is going to rethink the hybrid work model. And this could translate into ending remote work within Meta.
What Zuckerberg does not specify in this information is whether this result could have other causes: a more elaborate reception by the company when a person arrived at the company, compared to the reception given during the pandemic years, which were accompanied by massive hires in Meta, could be one cause. Or it may be due to staff demotivation in these years of uncertainty, which has been analyzed by studies. Or a possible labor discontent due to the decisions made by the company in recent years.
Performance and face-to-face work
In the letter published yesterday and also sent to all Meta employees, Mark Zuckerberg said that this year would also serve to rethink the hybrid work model in which the company is immersed.
Key to his remarks is that he delved into a number of ways the company intended to improve efficiencies, such as canceling “lower priority projects” and creation of a flatter organizational structure that involves eliminating managerial positions.
Right now, 3 years ago in Spain we went into lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and many companies in our country (and workers) had to adapt to teleworking. In the United States, Meta decided to impose mass teleworking in May 2020.
At this time, during the pandemic, there were also many hires at the company. Many people we were stuck at home with access to technology as one of the main sources of leisure or work and that gave a great boost to tech and online sales.
Zuckerberg himself, when announcing last year’s layoffs, said that “at the beginning of Covid, the world moved rapidly through the Internet and electronic commerce increased, which led to higher-than-expected revenue growth“Zuckerberg said, adding that this optimism led to massive hiring.
the meta empire hired 27,000 employees during the two years of the pandemicplus 15,000 people in 2022. These people who came to the social media giant in the pandemic years obviously had to do so by teleworking.
Opinions of other great CEOs on teleworking
Zuckerberg is not the only big CEO to speak publicly of his preference for office work over remote work. In June 2022, Elon Musk (not yet the owner of Twitter) sent a letter to Tesla employees about telecommuting saying that at Tesla you can telework… your extra hoursbut you have to spend 40 hours a week in the office.
And, with this letter, he also discredited all the companies that have advocated teleworking. According to the tycoon, “there are companies that do not require this (spend at least 40 hours a week in the office), But when was the last time you released an amazing product? long time ago”.
For his part, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said a few months ago that “we have to overcome what we describe as ‘productivity paranoia'”, speaking of the fact that the mismatch in the survey data between workers and managers and how it shows a “real disconnect in terms of expectations and what one feels.”