Has Zuckerberg's Leadership Reached Its Limit?... Only 1 in 4 Employees Trust Him

Large-scale cuts emphasizing "efficiency" lead to employee morale decline and confusion

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms (hereinafter Meta), the operator of Facebook, has come under scrutiny for his leadership. It is reported that employee morale has declined due to consecutive rounds of restructuring.

According to reports citing internal Meta sources by The Washington Post (WP) and others on the 9th (local time), only 26% of respondents in an employee survey conducted at the end of last month said they "trust the company leadership." This is a 5 percentage point drop from 31% in the survey conducted in October last year.

The response rate for "feeling personally valued" was 43%, which is also down 15 percentage points from last year's survey.

The decline in trust and morale toward management is largely attributed to the impact of two major rounds of restructuring last year and this year.

Meta, which laid off 11,000 employees at the end of last year, began additional layoffs of about 10,000 people this year. In April, it carried out a reduction of 4,000 employees, and from May, it started a layoff of 6,000 employees. In the second round of layoffs, non-engineering teams, specifically business teams such as marketing, site security, program management, content strategy, and corporate communications, were the main targets.

Considering last year's layoffs, a total of 21,000 employees have lost their jobs. The company's workforce, which was 87,000 at the end of last year, has been reduced to 66,000. Employees said, "The company became chaotic as nearly a quarter of the workforce disappeared."

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms [Photo by Yonhap News]

CEO Zuckerberg has called this year the "year of efficiency," emphasizing that the focus will be on cutting costs and reorganizing the organization to overcome the difficult economic situation.

In March, he wrote on his blog that "efficiency also includes reducing jobs," adding, "This will help us become a more technical company and realize our long-term vision to improve business performance." Currently, Meta has halted new hiring in key divisions.

However, after the second round of layoffs in May, one employee posted that "the morale of those who work hard and perform well has dropped, and trust in leadership has shattered," questioning, "Why should we stay at Meta?"

Another employee said, "I am having difficulty understanding the changed scope of work due to department reductions," and added, "Even when requesting clear explanations from management, only vague answers come back."

On the 8th, Meta held an all-employee meeting at its headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California, where it presented the company's blueprint along with various technologies under development.

At the meeting, Zuckerberg said, "We made difficult decisions aiming to build a better technology company for better products," and added, "When COVID-19 peaked, the number of employees exceeded 80,000, but I thought Meta was not doing well."

He continued, "I want us to use this period of stabilization to develop and rebuild our culture."

Meanwhile, Meta's first-quarter revenue increased by 3% compared to the same period last year, reaching $27.91 billion (approximately 36.1 trillion KRW). This marks positive growth for the first time in four quarters.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.