Facebook is preparing to lay off THOUSANDS more employees after pushing below-par performance reviews

Mark Zuckerberg has set the stage for another round of mass layoffs after giving thousands of workers underperforming reviews — as part of his “Year of Efficiency.”

Facebook parent Meta has joined numerous other big tech companies in laying off a large percentage of its workforce, but the 11,000 people who lost their jobs late last year could soon be joined by droves of their former employees.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in a recent round of appraisals, Meta gave about 10 percent of its employees poor job performance ratings, a possible sign that it intends to lay off another large chunk of its workforce.

The company’s preparations to lay off thousands more employees come as the “tech wreck” has swept through Silicon Valley following a post-pandemic financial slump.

Despite drastic cost-cutting measures in several areas of his business, Zuckerberg has invested an additional $4 million to improve his personal security.

Mark Zuckerberg has dubbed 2023 the “Year of Efficiency,” but one area he doesn’t want to make cuts in is his personal safety bill — which is reportedly set to increase by at least $4 million this year

Meta has already laid off around 10 percent of its workforce over the past year, and recent moves suggest more mass layoffs are on the horizon

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has taken several cost-cutting measures to salvage its poor bottom line, and bonuses for its highly paid tech executives are also being cut.

The mass layoffs come after Meta almost doubled its headcount to over 86,000 from 2019 to 2022 amid increased use of technology during the pandemic.

But large parts of Meta’s employees are now to be laid off as the company suffers from falling advertising revenues and expensive investments in the “Metaverse”.

According to Nasdaq, the company has reported an operating loss of nearly $24 billion over the past two years as a result of its Metaverse spending.

This has prompted Zuckerberg to roll out its “efficiency” effort to reverse Meta’s declining revenue, which is said to have lost $80 billion in value over the last year alone.

His recent moves include removing middle management to “flatten” Meta’s structure and increase productivity by introducing AI to the workforce.

Zuckerberg told investors earlier this month that the layoffs are intended to “make decisions faster,” while the AI ​​will help meta-engineers “be more productive.”

But while the CEO is a clearinghouse in Silicon Valley, he has also increased his personal security spending to $14 million for 2023, up from his usual $10 million in recent years.

His bodyguard bill, published in regulatory filings released Wednesday, shows his pre-tax security spending will be part of his skyrocketing protection costs, which are much higher than those of his tech exec peers.

Zuckerberg’s total security-related spend in 2021 totaled $26.8 million, according to Yahoo Finance, with that number set to grow even further in his “Year of Efficiency.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning another round of “large-scale layoffs” — following the first in the company’s history late last year

Meta’s mass layoffs come after making expensive investments in the “Metaverse.”

Zuckerberg will want to avoid the backlash Elon Musk is facing over his brutal Twitter firings

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s mass layoffs will affect teams across the company, including recruiting and some corporate functions

The efficiency label was introduced by the Meta CEO during the company’s most recent earnings call earlier this month.

In addition to downsizing and implementing AI tools in an attempt to boost performance on a limited budget, Meta recently took another cost-cutting step by shutting down Instagram’s “live shopping” marketplace feature.

About half of Meta’s new hires have never received a performance review at the company, and the bluntness of the most recent cycle has been described as a return to Zuckerberg’s harsh, “old-school” style.

The CEO’s penchant for being short was portrayed in his 2010 biopic The Social Network, in which a former worker told the Wall Street Journal that his latest moves were a return from “OG Mark” or “Old School Zuck.”

Following the news of the poor performance reviews, a Meta spokesperson said, ‘We’ve always had a goal-oriented culture of high performance, and our review process is designed to incentivize long-term thinking and quality work while helping employees achieve actionable feedback.’

The 10% of workers who received bad reviews reportedly took their reviews as a sign to seek new employment opportunities.

However, Meta’s drastic changes already appear to be paying off as the company reports net income of $4.7 billion for its fourth quarter.

The report ended a massive slump for the tech giant, which had seen quarterly returns fall three times in a row before finally posting profits.

Zuckerberg’s layoff of around 10 percent of his meta-employees came as several other large companies are also laying off large chunks of their workforce.

After Elon Musk took over Twitter, the entrepreneur brutally laid off half of the company’s workforce, around 3,750 employees.

Other companies suffering from the “tech wreck” include Google parent Alphabet, which cut 12,000 employees last month, about 6 percent of its workforce.

At just seven major tech companies, the job cuts announced in recent months total nearly 70,000: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, HP, and Twitter.

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk