Meta Mayhem: Hybrid Work FAIL ¦ Yet More Layoffs

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Meta’s enforced hybrid work plan is failing badly, and Meta makes more layoffs.

1. RTO Ructions Roil Ranks

First up this week: “Return to the office,” commanded the mighty Zuckerberg. And his minions mostly complied—after all, they might be fired if they didn’t.

Analysis: But the first month hasn’t gone well

Conference rooms are booked solid, so how can teams meet? Even if people are in the same building, their “hot” desks are scattered around on different floors. The hilarious upshot is—even though they had to commute to do so—they’re still meeting via video.

Kali Hays: Meta’s mandatory return to office is ‘a mess’

“Coming into the office to be on Zoom”
All of the roughly 65,000 workers … are required to be in an office at least three days a week. Attendance is tracked daily. [But] they’ve been met with a lack of space and privacy, along with productivity challenges.
…
One consistent problem is a lack of conference rooms to have team meetings, according to three employees. … It’s a challenge to get a conference room at all … much less one large enough for an entire team to meet.
…
“Hot desks,” as they’re known, are unassigned desks that need to be booked in advance. … “It seems impossible to get one desk for a long enough period,” one employee said.
…
One employee noted their team is mostly in other offices, [which] means their mandatory in-office work is the same as working from home—except with a commute. … “People are just coming into the office to be on Zoom,” the employee said. “Why?”

Why indeed? MattGaiser is baffled:

This is the one thing I find baffling about RTO. I know plenty of people who have been dragged into offices where they have no team members. So they are just on Zoom at a desk in the office rather than at home.
…
I did it for the last few days of my prior job: Was dragged into the office when all my co-workers were at least 3.5 hours away.

Steve Mollman reminds us how we got here:

“Those failing to comply could be fired”
Meta … championed remote work just a few years ago. … In 2020, the social media giant said it would start a significant shift to remote work on a permanent basis. CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted at the time, “We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, with a thoughtful and responsible plan for how to do this.” He estimated that about half of the company’s employees would be working remotely within the next five to 10 years.
…
But as of Sept. 5 this year, all employees, except those with management-approved exemptions, must be back in the office three days a week. … Those failing to comply could be fired.

“Forward leaning”? “Thoughtful and responsible”? iainmerrick spots the irony:

It also seems a bit strange for the company to have an overarching goal around building a “metaverse,” but not to try to figure out how they themselves might use those tools for their own work. No appetite for their own dogfood?

Woof. Top dog Mark Zuckerberg explains himself (kinda):

One of the things that I’m curious about is—there are all these debates right now about remote work, or people being together. I think [VR] gets us a lot closer to being able to work physically in different places, but actually have it feel like we’re together. I think the dream is that people will one day be able to just work wherever they want, but we’ll have all the same opportunities.
…
People could live physically where they want, while still being able to get the benefits of … feeling like you’re together with people at work. All the ways that help to build more culture and build better relationships and build trust, which I think are real issues if you’re not seeing people in person.

But jbombadil can’t understand it:

I will never understand this. I prefer working from the office and being around my colleagues. It’s more comfortable than home, and the commute is an added bonus for me.
…
That being said, I would never force my colleagues to go back to the office. … It’s cheaper for the company (no providing food for everyone, the office doesn’t have to accommodate everyone, etc.) and better for all employees, who can do exactly whatever they want.

2. Yet More Meta Layoffs

But Meta’s metaverse project ain’t going so well. Like Epic Games last week, Meta looks to be laying off hundreds of staff who are working on this “VR 3.0” effort (or perhaps 4.0—I’ve lost count). We’re told the RIF will be announced later today.

Analysis: Enough with the dorky headsets

The layoffs will continue until morale improves. Anyway, people need to go watch the seminal 1992 movie The Lawnmower Man.

Katie Paul: Meta to lay off employees … on Wednesday

“Meta has slashed around 21,000 jobs”
Meta is planning to lay off employees on Wednesday in the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division focused on creating custom silicon, two sources familiar with the matter told [me]. … Employees were informed of the layoffs in a post on Meta’s internal discussion forum [that] said they would be notified about their status with the company by early Wednesday morning.
…
If the cuts are deep, they could hamper … Zuckerberg’s project to build … the “metaverse,” [which] he has predicted “will redefine our relationship with technology.” … Meta has slashed around 21,000 jobs since November of last year as it has sought to reassure investors that it was reining in costs amid waning revenue growth, high inflation and concerns that Reality Labs was losing too much money.

Drip, drip, drip. rsilvergun points at the pachyderm in the parlor:

So when are they going to lay off Mark Zuckerberg? Because this entire fiasco was his baby. … If he spent $1M on that it would’ve been a fiasco, let alone $30B. And of course little dictator Zuck in his fiefdom got to order everyone to march to their dooms. Every single person on that project knew it was doomed to failure because it was a product nobody wanted but the boss. So they had to waste months of their lives on nonsense that was never going to go anywhere.
…
It’s funny how CEOs make decisions that absolutely wreck the value of a company and they are a-okay. For some reason … it’s always us it takes it in the shorts. [But] we always get right back up again and say, “Please sir can I have another?” Are we ever going to learn?

Meanwhile, kwertyoowiyop weeps in sociopathy:

Telling employees on Tuesday that you may lay them off but they have to wait … to find out? That is some ice-cold management.

The Moral of the Story:
Be where you are—otherwise you will miss your life

—The Buddha

You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi, @richij or tlv@richi.uk.

Image: Jonny Gios (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)