Mark Zuckerberg's Ruthlessness vis a vis Employees Is What Facebook Needs Now
Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai sent a surprising memo to his staff this week: “Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” he wrote, according to tech news site The Verge.
Not only did his message underscore the increasingly challenging outlook for tech firms, it marked a shift to a tougher tone from the tech industry that is poised only to intensify in the weeks ahead. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s own warning to employees last month was even darker: “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here,' he said in one of his weekly Q&As with staff. The Facebook founder added that he was pushing for more aggressive goals. “Some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you,” he added, “and that self-selection is okay with me.”
It’s a little jarring to hear a tech CEO turn up the heat in a way that echoes Jack Welch’s rank-and-yank approach to culling low performers. Tech companies, after all, have generally operated like employee nirvanas, paying high salaries and offering lavish perks from catered meals and free concerts, to on-site massage and egg freezing.
But the sharper tone is necessary. Tech has entered an unfamiliar era of uncertainty, marked by tumbling shares and hiring slowdowns — challenges that would have been shocking even a year ago. To make matters worse, social media firms like Google’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are also facing heightened regulatory scrutiny while trying to refashion their products on the fly to fend off competition from ByteDance Inc.’s TikTok.
All told, the sunny days of tech’s unstoppable growth are over, and the
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