Post #2832032

2026-05-16 14:41 UTC

Meta is doing the exact same thing: Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant will reportedly hand out roughly 8,000 pink slips on Wednesday, May 20, eliminating about 10% of its global workforce. Notably, though, these cuts will arrive on the heels of one of the most lucrative quarters in the company’s history: $56.31 billion in revenue and $26.8 billion in net income for the first three months of 2026… moneywise.com/…/meta-layoffs-8000-workers-zuckerb…

Replies (2)

@ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 2026-05-16 15:00

Slashing 10% of your workforce annually is something Jack Welch thought of when he was CEO of General Electric; essentially it shifts that 10% of staff overhead cost straight to profits per year. The justification they give for the figure is that it’s the lowest performing 10% according to internal key performance indicator (KPI) metrics. What this effectively does is two fold: Anyone who’s focusing on delivering stuff the company needs long term isn’t always or sometimes never will produce nice neat KPIs that can be measured along with the rest of the company. This means these people are under constant pressure and can often get swept up in the firings. It makes KPIs, a measuring tool, the target which as any statistician will tell you that when you make the measurement a target it ceases to be a good measuring tool. Because everyone is automatically incentivised to deliver KPIs NOT the actual company deliverables that generate the added value and therefore the profit. This means after 5 to 10 years of this cycle all that’s left of the company’s institutional knowledge is how to deliver for KPIs and the sycophants who best adapt to this reality. You get a hollowing out of the company. If this AI fuelled trend keeps up then companies like Cisco and Meta will eventually implode at some point.

Open ##2832031
@gurty@lemmy.world 2026-05-16 20:04

I was about to say, two layoff posts on my feed back to back. Not a good sign.

Open ##3052838