Meta 10,000 layoffs witnesses self-report: Xiao Zha tasted the sweetness of cost reduction

A senior engineer in the London department of Ins, talking about the big layoffs of Meta that he experienced.

Written by: Lingzi County

Editor: Zheng Xuan

Source: Geek Park

"The Year of Efficiency" is the theme set by Mark Zuckerberg for 2023 in February, with the aim of improving finances and making the company more efficient. Layoffs have subsequently become a shadow that continues to hang over the heads of all employees.

From March to May, Meta will lay off a total of 10,000 employees in three batches. The layoffs in April have not yet completely ended, and the third round of layoffs in May has just started. This does not include the 20,000 people who have already been laid off by the end of 2022. According to the public data in the financial report, after all the layoffs are over, Meta's employees will be reduced from 87,000 at the peak to 67,000.

Leo, an engineer in Instagram's London division, was among the second set of layoffs in April. She has not been in the company for a long time, and she is used to calling the company "Facebook" instead of "Meta" when chatting. In terms of qualifications, they belong to senior software engineers, that is, L5 level that is considered to be mature, stable, can be promoted, can change jobs, and has a sense of security.

As one of the layoffs storm, she appears calm. The layoff process in the UK will last for two to four months. Before waiting for the final negotiation results, she plans to interview and plan for the future. Geek Park chatted with her about the layoffs, the fast-paced, high-stress working atmosphere at Meta, and her perspective on the company as an employee.

She has worked in many different places, including domestic start-up companies. She said that working in Meta as an engineer is tiring, but it is very refreshing and has a lot of power to speak. It's just that the company doesn't have a moat, and everyone is struggling to support it. This is the fundamental reason why Meta wants to be All in the Metaverse. Xiao Zha announced the layoffs in three batches. She felt that in addition to the operational feasibility, she also had the consideration of continuing to promote the stock price.

Meta's stock price has been on the rise since February, when it made public its layoff plans. Shares jumped 12% on the day after the most recent first-quarter earnings report at the end of April.

The following is the edited Leo readme. Through her narration, it may bring you a piece of the puzzle to understand this giant company.

I was surprised to get a layoff notice because I didn't think I would get it. It was later discovered that our entire group had received it.

According to British law, if one of the 10 same positions and levels is to be laid off, all 10 people will receive "You are potentially affected (you may be affected)". At this time, we don't know how many people will be laid off.

My entire team has received "potentially affected", because the previous Instagram expansion plan has changed, the London branch will be withdrawn, and these people will be relocated back to the United States.

According to the company's previous vision, it wants Instagram's engineer team to operate globally. It is best to have branches on the east coast of the United States, the west coast and the UK, and the UK also has an important team. It was later discovered that due to the time difference, the efficiency was not very high; at the same time, due to the overall recruitment freeze of the company, the recruitment in London was not very smooth.

This layoff is accompanied by organizational adjustment, that is, organizational flattening. IC (Note: Individual contributors, non-manager post) has Manager (manager) on it, and there are several layers among Zuckerberg. Five or six floors are normal, eight or nine floors are too much. Now there are too many levels in some places, and some managers may be cut off, or given the option to convert to IC, and some engineers will be cut off at the same time.

There are indeed cases of architectural redundancy. Our team is busy and the day-to-day is stressful, but other teams that are more relaxed certainly have. For example, some managers manage 8 people, and some managers have only two managers and no other ICs. I think this is really unreasonable.

About 10,000 people may be laid off in 2023, and some departments will be reorganized along with the layoffs.

In mid-March, the entire company received an email notification. Then there was a Q&A between the whole company and Xiao Zha (Zuckerberg). He said that when laying off employees in November last year, you said that the company was not transparent, and now the company is more transparent to you.

He talked about why layoffs and the logic of layoffs. There will be three waves of layoffs. The first wave will be in March, with about 1,500 people, mainly recruiting. We didn't know that the company Recruiting had 1500 people. The third week in April and the third week in May are the second and third waves, respectively.

The second wave is technicians, including teams and departments involving engineers, which is where I am, and about 4,000 people will be cut. There should be more people in May, maybe 5,000 to 6,000 (Note: In late May, Meta announced the third wave of layoffs of 6,000 people), which belongs to Business, including marketing and sales, and there are not many layoffs of engineers, unless the project is really bad up.

Xiao Zha explained the reason for the layoffs in three waves. Only the recruiting can be laid off first. After the technicians are laid off, after thinking about it, they will know how to lay off the business. It's reasonable to say, but I guess, there may be considerations that continue to drive the stock price.

He gave many reasons for the layoffs, one of which was hard for me to accept, but it's normal to think about it. He said that the cuts in November were good, and the efficiency was improved. He did not expect to be able to remove so many invisible expenses. So he wants to push harder. ** Some projects have been closed, and the cost saved does not only include the expenses of these projects, but also includes the expenses related to transportation and communication related to these projects. I don't think he pretended, he just said what he thought.

The hidden meaning is that he feels that many people may still be dragging down the company, and there is no need for so many people. Some projects are really good to close. He wants to focus on some profitable projects or things with potential.

The interests of the company and the individual cannot be completely aligned, so I think it is completely reasonable from his point of view, but I was shocked when he said it. It is difficult for others to accept what I usually say, but he actually made it difficult for me to accept.

But this is also the benefit of Q&A, the questions are very sharp, so we are very happy to see him Q&A.

He is very engineer, and he is the only one who is still a CEO in a big company. I also saw this when I entered Facebook.

On the UK side, there will be a negotiation process that lasts more than two months. Two weeks after receiving layoff emails, the company will give time to vote on negotiators. The number of delegates is based on the number of people affected and is currently 50:1.

Because everyone's demands are different, the representative should try to cover everyone's demands. Some people want to stay, some people want to take more money to go, some people want to go to the United States, everyone will talk about their own concerns, and if you like it, you can vote for him to be a representative.

For example, for people from war-torn countries like Ukraine and Russia, staying in the UK is the first priority, and they would like to transfer jobs first. Some people will say that I have worked in the United States and the United Kingdom for many years, and I am very familiar with visa matters, so I can help you get a good ruling; some people say that I am a manager. I have been laid off in the past few years, and I also I have laid off others, and I have done a lot of research on this aspect.

These colleagues have efficiently established many WhatsApp groups, established timelines on Google Docs, gathered all resources and unions, and voted online. There is no organization, it is spontaneous. There's so much they can do with three days off work. I find it surprising, but it is also inevitable. So I am very happy, my colleagues are really capable.

These representatives will negotiate with the company for about a month, which is collective consultation. On the day negotiations begin, the company tells those representatives exactly how many jobs to cut.

They acted as mouthpieces and chatted with us until we got an agreement result (package) that everyone thought was okay. There are a lot of things to talk about: how much compensation will be paid; will some people want to stay, can some people be given a chance to transfer to the United States; if some people care about visas, can they give less compensation and let us live more? Stay on the payroll for a while, so that people with a visa (on visa) can find a job.

During this period, it will be determined who will be fired, and the standard is also negotiated between us, representatives, and the company. The standard for layoffs in November is set as follows. The last performance review rating, plus several years of service in the company, add 0.5 points each year, and then add the scores of other dimensions to calculate the total score of each person. Sorting will determine who is affected.

I belong to Instagram in the UK. Whether it will be transferred to the US is another variable. During the collective negotiation, the person representing Instagram will receive more options. However, since the department is withdrawn as a whole, the grading stage is meaningless. In principle, no one will stay.

After the collective consultation, the affected people enter into individual consultation (individual consultation). If personal negotiations involve attorney fees, the company will reimburse them in the end.

The company will consider personal circumstances as appropriate, but you must speak out your appeal, and everything can be discussed on the table. I could say I'm the sole breadwinner in the family and I have one child—but that's not as strong as "I have three kids and my wife is pregnant again."

In the United States, the money is given directly. Several of my colleagues received this round of layoff emails on April 18, and they took their bags and left within two days. There are also people in the UK who have not passed the trial period, and they left directly on the same day. In the United States, according to the official statement, 16 weeks of wages are compensated, plus two weeks for each additional year of service. If you want to sue the company, you can sue later, but you have to leave that day.

In theory, I have to work before starting the collective negotiation, but I am not in the mood, because what if I don’t work, the company should lay off or lay off. However, there is a dilemma: you may not be able to leave. If you are not laid off in the end and do not work during the period, the performance review next year may not be good, so you may still be laid off next year.

Among the people who were laid off in April this year, there were those who stayed in October last year. In October and November last year, some people in London didn't work very much. They were going through our current process, and finally they stayed. But in April, due to poor performance before, he was still laid off.

Since the last round of layoffs, we have been working very hard, because the layoffs in November last year did not affect any of our teams. I'm still thinking about what to do next year, and I haven't even spent a lot of time watching the layoff process over there.

**Meta is the most tiring and busiest among several large companies, the promotion is the fastest, and the mobility is also greater, which will empty out people. **Performance Review used to be semi-annual, but now it is annual. This is Meta's most famous culture. Working here is more tiring than working in a startup company, but there should be nothing more effective than this to motivate employees. If you have taken RE for three consecutive Halfs (Note: Redefine Expectation, redefining expectations, the highest Meta performance rating, less than 5% of the total number of employees), basically half of your wealth is already free.

You need to talk about what projects you did last year, quantify how much money these projects brought to the company, or how much money you saved; how many people you brought in, and what direction you pointed out. There are many dimensional evaluations. You need to quantify all the impacts, and finally you will be given a rating, which will directly affect next year's salary and stock issuance.

When you are doing each project, you have to think about a few points in advance. Whether the impact is big or the opportunity is big, how to measure it, and then proceed to do it. If you bet on the wrong project, you may waste a long time, and the rewards brought by this year will be lost. There are a lot of mental adjustments that need to be made, and you will feel that work is so rushed that you need to think strategically about when to take time off.

Because the cycle of each assessment is only one year or half a year, the time is very short. This can lead to shortsightedness in everyone's work. Unless the company level encourages you to do a long-term project, it can recognize you when there are no phased results. Of course, there are some games involved, this is not a very simple matter.

If you want to do a long-term project, you need to write a proposal first, clarify what you want to do in the short term, and set a few milestones in the long term. But long-term planning is difficult to cope with later changes. I have been in the company for more than a year, and there have been two large-scale organizational adjustments. Organizational changes, the very clear plans that have been made with a lot of thought before may have to be changed. Too many layoffs and organizational adjustments will make the company's state more short-sighted.

Since entering Meta for a year, my perception of the company has not changed much. Everyone is very capable, and the colleagues around me work very hard. It makes me feel very happy to work in this place.

When many people come in, they may find that the person next to them is either a PhD from a prestigious school, or has published a very good paper, and feels that they are scumbags, which will lead to psychological problems. Therefore, each new employee will be specially given a training called overcoming imposter syndrome (imposter syndrome). I can imagine that the previous people may be more capable, and some outstanding people may have left, but now the employees around me are still very capable.

According to my experience, a person's ability is very closely related to his undergraduate school. If his undergraduate school is a prestigious school, such as Yale and Harvard, there is no shortcoming in his comprehensive ability; but if he is very strong and his undergraduate school is not very good, he can be regarded as having a skill, and his comprehensive ability should have other shortcomings. This is the result of my long observation.

The people around you are professionally brilliant and will put pressure on you, but it doesn't make you feel uncomfortable pressure. Everyone is not very aggressive (aggressive) style. I work 8-10 hours in London. The afternoon on the west coast of the United States is my evening. Many times I need to work at night, which is actually very tiring. We don't have the concept of working overtime. If we want to take a break, we can take a break, and if we can do more, we can do it for a while.

**The special feature of Meta is that employees are very good at managing upwards. Being a manager seems to be easier than IC. **enigneer To find a direction for himself, he needs to verify that his direction is the general direction. The biggest job of a leader is to maintain the motivation of the enigneer below.

My manager has worked here for many years, and I will tell him what I want to do. He will tell you some personal opinions, tell you what he thinks about this direction, and give pointers. If he thinks it is reasonable, he will tell you to do it. He thinks it is unreasonable, so he will give you another direction and let you think about it. But if it's your turn to be given direction, it might not be a good direction. **Meta's philosophy is that you will be motivated to follow the direction you find yourself, and you will do it casually when others give you the direction, which is not good for yourself. **

If everyone grabs the popular direction, it may not be good, this is also a kind of game. If everyone is looking for directions in a one-acre-three-point land, because everyone's speed is about the same, in the end everyone can harvest only a little bit of fruit.

This actually tests the relationship between you and your colleagues. During running-in, you will find that whoever is more outstanding, you know who will foresee something and who will find a good direction.

You have to make sure the manager knows what you are doing. At the same time, you have to be smart enough and have a high enough EQ to make your peer review think that you have done a good job and are a good person. Your manager is your lawyer. He will speak for you during the calibration between different teams, so you should provide evidence for your lawyer as much as possible. He will use his methods to defend you and let you achieve A very high position.

** At the macro level, I think the company has no moat, and everyone is struggling to support the company. **In fact, the company has always wanted to find a big moat. At present, any changes made by Apple or Google will have a great impact on the company. The entire system is dependent.

The best way to remove dependencies is to create a set of stories from the bottom, so I feel that the metaverse is something that can be done. If the metaverse can be implemented, it will be a big moat.

But there is still a long way to go, and it is not immediately possible to see the dawn and make money. From a technical point of view, Meta is quite strong in this regard. But when did the key shift in the field happen? There is also a need to monetize the story. It's not easy, but if we can keep leading the industry, I think it's a way.

I bought Quest 2, not Quest pro. The company does not require us to buy a headset, but everyone will buy it because the company has benefits that can reimburse part of it. I haven't used Horizon workroom, nor have I been asked to.

I think WhatsApp is also the next growth point. This is an app that serves a large number of customers with a single engineer, which is very powerful. Data in key regions such as the United States also performed well.

In Meta, the engnieer has a very powerful voice and can veto everything, especially in Facebook-related departments. As long as the engineer has sufficient authority, the manager basically follows the engineer.

There will be no data-driven (Data Driven) project here. There are many projects in China that let you do it right away. If you ask product design or product managers, they don’t know if it’s a good idea, but they just want to do it. We will not do this kind of project without Data Drive. You tell me how much clicks and conversions can be increased by remodeling, and I will do it. **Idea does not distinguish between high and low, but its impact sizing can be calculated numerically. **

This should be the most engineer-friendly company among technology companies. I don't think it should be experienced in China. I have worked in a domestic start-up company, and engineer is more like a tool. If you say overtime, you can work overtime, and you can do whatever you want. If you ask the product manager why, he can't really explain it clearly. There are many such cases.

In Meta, the bureaucracy is actually not so strong. You can influence others, and you can discuss everything on the table. In the case of other companies with stronger bureaucracy, individuals can't do much except to build a good relationship with the manager.

If the L5 does not want to be promoted, it is also possible to keep the position of the L5. Or you need support, you give me some directions, or I think this has a great impact on my package, you must tell me, and then he will tell you, it may be discussed on the table in other companies useless.

I have worked in many companies and experienced one company closure and three company layoffs. It is very common for me to leave or change jobs.

If when you were young, you set your direction on Facebook and decided how much money you want to make before retiring, you can retire at about 35 or 45 years old. If you live a simpler life, you don’t have to work anymore. You can do this in the prime time of the first 10 years of the Internet.

The overall situation is not very good now. Big companies are overrecruiting, and they want to take this opportunity to fire more people, so as not to be so bloated. Elon Musk also told them that it’s okay to fire all the people.

The current situation, I think, is actually a pretty good thing for me. You were working on a company project before, and in an instant you are going to do a project about life, and you can still get a salary. I may go to a few interviews, and at the same time see how big the bargaining package is in the company, and then think about what to do.

In my personality, there are many things to consider. For example, should I go to the United States? If I don't go, should I go to other countries? I want to know what decision is the most reasonable and beneficial for me and my family. Some things are probabilistic, and there are many trade-offs to be made.

It's not up to me to decide what the industry will be. At worst, I'll quit this business, and I can find a job in a bank, so I'm not particularly worried.