I recently came across an article by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), outlining their goals for the year. https://about.fb.com/news/2023/03/mark-zuckerberg-meta-year-of-efficiency/amp/ – few points I would list here and review closely.
Goals:
– make us a better technology company
– improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long term vision
Very clear goals and second actually applicable for all companies, if they want to survive in the difficult environment than financial performance definitely should always improve. If the company put it as a goal – most likely for a long time there was a lot of money and nobody thought it’ll end so fast.
Less hiring, reduce size of recruiting team
late April – restructuring and layoffs in tech groups
late May – restructuring and layoffs in business groups
reduce by around 10k people and 5k of open positions
From the end of 2022 the trend of reducing the sizes of tech and business teams appears more and more often in news, and it’s not only about coming crises – companies were hiring a lot of people even without clear business value, now less experienced engineers, managers, etc. become heavy for company’s budget + on the market more and more potential candidates with better experience and skills.
Flatten is faster
It’s well-understood that every layer of a hierarchy adds latency and risk aversion in information flow and decision-making. Every manager typically reviews work and polishes off some rough edges before sending it further up the chain.
This is brilliant – it’s been a while since multiple layers isolated engineers from people who make decisions and leads directions for the company. So many great developers got burned out when they tried to deliver risks and so many projects did not meet deadlines due to information distortion from the bottom to the top management level. I hope this will clearly show how many levels requires for a company to survive and be successful.
Indirect costs compound and it’s easy underestimate them.
This one is actually a good rule for all entrepreneurs – we easily can be tricked by quick calculations and do not see the entire picture.
Meta has taken steps to achieve these goals by reducing hiring, restructuring tech and business groups, and flattening their hierarchy to speed up decision-making. These changes reflect a trend we’re seeing in many companies, as they look to optimize costs and streamline operations.
One important lesson for entrepreneurs is the need to account for indirect costs, which can quickly compound and be underestimated. This is especially relevant in today’s dynamic business environment, where agility and adaptability are essential.
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