Go Woke, Go Broke: Zuckerberg Expected To Announce Mass Layoffs After ‘One Of The Worst Downturns’

Posted For: taxpayer22

Due to horrible financial conditions under the Biden administration, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly laying the groundwork for mass layoffs at Meta. Managers “who are unable to get on track” could lose their jobs as part of the cuts, Reuters reports.

Zuckerberg is expected to identify employee performance as the reasoning behind the layoffs. Critics have accused Facebook of “going woke” by using left-wing fact-checkers to censor conservative voices on the platform.

During a weekly employee meeting, 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.”

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg stated.

“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,” he added.

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.

“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.’”

“I don’t think that this sort of volatility that companies face is always that unhealthy for making sure that you have the right people at companies,” Zuckerberg said at the time.

Meta shares have declined more than 50% so far this year as Zuckerberg attempts to reinvent his social media giant as a metaverse company. As The Post previously reported, some Meta workers have grumbled that the company’s share slump is crushing the value of their stock options.

Meta’s struggles have coincided with a broader downturn in the tech sector. The Nasdaq has fallen into bear territory and posted its worst first-half performance on record.

Meta chief product officer Chris Cox emphasized the severity of the situation in a separate memo to workers ahead of Zuckerberg’s remarks, according to Reuters.

“I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce. We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox wrote.