‘I Got This Wrong' Wasn’t the Apology We Needed From Big Tech
It's par for the course to make mistakes in technology. A product goes nowhere so you shut it down and move on; regulators give you slaps on the wrist; you fight the odd lawsuit. Most costs amount to pocket change because when you're moving fast and breaking things in tech, consequences aren't that painful.
Except now they are.
For the first time in their history, Facebook, Twitter and other tech firms are cutting thousands of jobs, killing tech's reputation as a haven for employment, trussed up with free meals and high salaries. It is the hardest thing their founders have done, they said in long, apologetic memos announcing the layoffs, statements that were so similar in how they spun the problem as a product of overenthusiasm and not just bad business decisions that they could have come from the same public relations company.
“We were much too optimistic,” said Patrick and John Collison, the sibling founders of payment provide Stripe Inc., as they showed 14% of their workforce the door. “Buoyed” by product success, “we overhired.”
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg expressed a similar sentiment in his own memo: “I made the decision to significantly increase our investments,” during the online pandemic boom. “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” He is cutting 11,000 jobs, or 13% of his workforce.
And last week, as Elon Musk laid off roughly half of Twitter's staff, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted: “I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.”
In other words, everything was going too well, the founders got swept up in the excitement and pushed things too far. But that is only half the story.
Zuckerberg didn't address the billions of dollars he has sunk into the metaverse,
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