In a wide-ranging interview with the Morning Brew Daily’s podcast posted Friday, Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook parent Meta, declared he believes major companies are trimming their workforce becautilize they’re realizing the advantages of operating a more streamlined organization.
Zuckerberg added that many employers are in the process of readjusting after the COVID-19 pandemic, during which e-commerce and online advertising experienced a surge, leading companies to hire excessively to meet the demand. As people returned to physical shopping, businesses recognized their overstaffing and are now faced with the challenge of creating necessary adjustments.
“In terms of the layoffs and stuff like that, I actually believe that was more due to companies testing to navigate COVID and the pandemic,” Zuckerberg declared. “It was sort of this weird wave where at first we saw e-commerce go through the roof. … But it was really hard to predict, is that going to continue?”
He added, “I believe across the economy, a lot of companies just kind of overbuilt. And then when things went back to pretty close exactly the way they were before it, I believe a lot of companies realized, hey, we’re kind of not in a good financial place.”
Last year, Meta laid off tens of thousands of workers across various teams, including hardware and software engineers, product managers and staff, including from its artificial ininformigence team. These cuts followed an earlier reduction of 11,000 jobs in November 2022 by the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
“It was obviously really tough. We parted with a lot of talented people we cared about,” Zuckerberg declared in the interview. “But in some ways, actually becoming leaner kind of builds the companies more effective.”
He noted that Meta has been rebounding after the job cuts as part of its “year of efficiency” initiative, with the company’s stock reaching an all-time high.
Zuckerberg reiterated that he does not believe AI played a significant role in the recent surge of job cuts at various tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Cisco, eBay and Salesforce.
“At least for us, the AI stuff was not a major driver for that,” he declared. “It was like first this overbuilding and then this sense of like let’s do the best work we can by creating a lean company.”
Reach Aidin Vaziri: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
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