At Meta, the Facebook platform has been around the longest and currently employs the most people.
As part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to “flatten” Facebook, layoffs are likely.
A representative from Meta stated that the strategy to “become more efficient” was still being worked on.
A new directive at Meta calls for fewer management levels, moving Facebook closer to the structure of Instagram in the process.
Facebook, which was created by Meta’s current CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, twenty years ago, is undergoing additional simplification, according to two sources familiar with the matter cited by Insider. According to the sources, Zuckerberg has declared 2023 the “year of efficiency” at Facebook and is working to make the company’s structure more similar to Instagram’s.
According to a report by Insider, another round of layoffs is imminent at the company, and it’s estimated that anywhere from 5 percent to 10 percent of the workforce may be affected. Given Zuckerberg’s new objective of “flattening” the corporation as a whole, layoffs are likely across Meta’s board, but particularly on the Facebook platform, which employs the most people. There have already been layoffs at Facebook, with 11,000 staff being let go in November when Meta carried out its first ever mass layoff.
The intention to reorganise Facebook is “not surprising,” according to another insider. “Incentives have traditionally been tied to the growth of a department and the number of new employees a supervisor is able to hire.” The platform’s culture has caused it to become “bloated,” the source said, which is “difficult for many” within the company to accept because investors value leaner cost structures in the current economic situation.
In November, after Mark publicly announced that the firm was restructuring teams, the Facebook app team realigned to better line with the organization’s values and ambitions, according to a representative for Meta. “There is nothing fresh or ongoing about this reorganisation. While we have made no secret of our intention to streamline operations by eliminating unnecessary middle management and flattening the company’s organisational structure, no one’s job has changed as a result of these efforts, and no public announcements have been made.”
One of the persons familiar with Facebook’s present structure described it as “a matrix” architecture. This concept has been used successfully by large corporations to foster cooperation between departments by having several managers, each with their own area of expertise, oversee the same projects at the same time.
Earlier this month, Zuckerberg stated that he no longer wanted Meta to be a firm where “managers manage managers,” arguing that a flatter organisational structure will make for “a more exciting place to work.” According to one former employee, Meta now has “too many” managers, which can lead to an overly bureaucratic work atmosphere.
According to some accounts, Instagram’s organisational structure is more akin to the vertically-oriented “functional” org model. Workers are organised into specialised teams and report directly to a single executive or manager. It’s more compartmentalised, but that’s increasingly seen as an advantage since it allows for swifter decision making. Instagram, which Meta purchased in 2012, was “less bloated” than Facebook, according to a former employee, despite early efforts to have it grow rapidly and run more like Facebook.
“This is about getting rid of so many sub-product groups at Facebook,” one of the people knowledgeable said of the restructure.
There’s a mapped-out method for cutting staff within it. One of the persons acquainted with the firm and Linkedin statistics estimates that Instagram employs roughly 20,000 people, whereas Facebook employs nearly 40,000 people on its own. Yet, the gap in the number of people who use each app is substantially narrower. A monthly average of 1.9 billion people use Instagram. There are roughly 2.9 billion people using Facebook on a monthly basis. In other words, an app housed under Meta has two-thirds of Facebook’s user base, along with features like Reels, that are crucial to the company’s future growth aspirations, with only half of the workforce.
Since Meta’s layoff in November, Insider has reported, Facebook has been undergoing some organisational changes. Yet, according to a current employee, many managers have been informed that they are losing their teams and being relegated to “individual contributor” status in recent weeks.
Those with years of managerial expertise are being told they need to train for a role they haven’t had in years, the source added. What’s worse is that it pits them against the employees they used to oversee.
According to this source, several employees who are unwilling to accept a demotion have inquired if they might instead receive severance pay.
They’re trying to coerce people into quitting, the source continued. “But, severance pay is not available if you voluntarily leave your job. Many are feeling helpless in the current job market.”
Do you work for Meta, or do you have knowledge about this company? You may reach Kali Hays through email at khays@insider.com, over the encrypted messaging service Signal at 949-280-0267, or via Twitter direct message at @hayskali. Make contact using a means that is not related to your job