‘This was ultimately my call’- Mark Zuckerberg is seen on leaked video call telling executives he will lay off 11,000 Meta workers
An emotionless Mark Zuckerberg offered some scant words of encouragement to the 11,000 he laid off on Wednesday, a video call leaked hours after the mass firings has revealed.
Provided by one of the workers affected by the layoffs, the portion of the call shows a pale faced Zuckerberg appearing before employees virtually Wednesday, hours after Meta brass circulated a memo saying it was laying off 13 percent of its staff.
In the brief clip, the 38-year-old Facebook founder attempts to explain what he ultimately asserted was ‘his decision’ with the firings – the first major round in the firm’s 18-year history.
In the memo distributed hours earlier, Zuckerberg announced he was making reductions throughout every facet of the sprawling company – which recently suffered a massive loss in market value with stocks down 70 percent.
Zuckerberg addressed employees virtually Wednesday around 1pm ET to offer a curt continuation of apologies aired in that cold correspondence – with the tech mogul’s trademark demeanor on display throughout the short call.
Meta – down to a mere $268 billion evaluation from the more than $1 trillion seen last year – owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In addition to the layoffs, the company plans to drastically slow hiring in the coming year to further cut costs.
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‘I know there must be just a range of different emotions. I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision,’ Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as a Harvard undergrad in 2004, says in the leaked clip, obtained by NBC News.
The call was one of two separate ones held by the CEO, a source said – one for the laid-off employees, and one for those not affected.
‘I’m the founder and CEO, I’m responsible for the health of our company, for our direction, and for deciding how we execute that,’ the exec said, adding, ‘including things like this.’
Zuckerberg would then tell those affected that he took ‘full responsibility’ for the decision.
‘This was ultimately my call,’ he said, appearing before the workers in an empty conference room at Meta’s Menlo Park Headquarters on 1 Hacker Way.
‘And it was one of the hardest calls that I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company,’ the CEO droned, adding, ‘obviously, it has a big impact on your lives.’
He was then quick to add: ‘But also for our mission.’
Zuckerberg would go on to offer some words of appreciation to the outgoing employees, who will receive 16 weeks severance plus two weeks for every year of service, the company said Tuesday.
‘We’re losing people who- you’ve really put your heart and soul into this place,’ the CEO – a onetime coder who in the past has been criticized for his cold, calculated approach to management – stammered.
‘No matter what team you may have worked on, each of you played a role in contributing to the products that billions of people use to connect every day.’
Zuckerberg proceeded to encourage the ousted workers – who reportedly were culled because the company had been overstaffed due to misplaced optimism about its growth.
‘Each of you is talented and passionate, and each of you has played a role in making Meta the success that it is,’ he said.
‘No matter what team you may have worked on, each of you played a role in contributing to the products that billions of people use to connect every day.’
Mere hours earlier, in an email to employees, Zuckerberg told employees the firings were ‘necessary’ after the company lost two-thirds of its value in the span of roughly a year.
‘Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,’ the memo – which offered an apology but was widely criticized as cold – read.
Zuckerberg wrote: ‘I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.’
The CEO – whose wealth is largely tied up in his company’s valuation – has since failed to see a return on those investments, earnings reports for the firm revealed late last month – with the company subsequently seeing more than $30 billion of those funds evaporate in a matter of months.
The statements show that the exec has bet his company’s future on the technology, sinking tens of billions of dollars into it in hopes it will garner interest from wary, younger users who have been increasingly drawn to other platforms such as TikTok.