by MN Gordon, All News Pipeline:
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“Year of Efficiency”
Sometimes things must get worse before they get better. To completely remodel a kitchen, for instance, you must first demo and gut the old one. These initial steps backward can be demoralizing.
But there’s no way around it. And with perseverance and an ample budget, the ultimate result is usually a big improvement.
Similarly, remodeling a tired company requires making short term sacrifices for long term gains. The initial efforts can produce ugliness. And with the lives and livelihoods of employees on the line, the decisions can be emotional. Yet sometimes it must be done.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told investors that 2023 will be the “year of efficiency.” If you recall, the company RIFed 11,000 workers in November 2022. The scuttlebutt is that more layoffs are coming.
Currently, the prospect of imminent layoffs is triggering uncertainty about what projects will go forward, what will be cancelled, and who will be working on them. This has created an interim situation where some Meta employees are getting paid to do zero work. Strangely, for Meta to become more efficient, it must first be less efficient.
Still, Zuckerberg is clear on his objective. In Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call on February 1, the CEO noted:
“We’re working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive.”
And in a recent all-hands meeting, Zuckerberg – again – put middle managers on notice:
“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.”
Perhaps this is harsh. But it’s true.
Moreover, when you get down to it, Zuckerberg is a real technology geek. And he’s recognized that many of his cohorts, in the company he founded, are something else.
Real Technology Geeks
Real technology geeks, if you’ve ever met one, don’t care about days off or benefits or what the latest social justice cause is. They care about programming and coding new applications and platforms that create something cool and elegant.
Real technology geeks, compelled by an idea, are on a mission. With singleness of purpose, they close the blinds, turn off the lights, pull up their hoodies, and get wired in. Then they crunch and code for 72 hours straight, pausing only to chug Red Bull energy drinks.
Real technology geeks are who created Apple, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Samsung, Tesla, Salesforce, Oracle, and others. They’ve left their fingerprints on all aspects of modern life. Good and bad.
But like any growth industry, be it the auto industry of the mid-20th century or the technology industry today, at some point the growth overshoots the future value. The point of overshoot, however, isn’t discernable when it first happens. The momentum and rush for market share obscures it. Sometimes it can be obscured for decades.
During the latent overshoot period, the industry becomes occupied by pretenders. Over the last decade, for example, technology companies were unwittingly filled with fake technology geeks who demanded free lunches and fat paychecks. Rather than driving technology into the next frontier, they occupied their time posting memes and feigning outrage on social media.
These fake technology geeks concentrated into middle management positions. There, they didn’t have to do work of any meaningful value. Instead, they made staffing plans and delivered performance reports up the management chain.
It was a lot of fun while it lasted. Nonetheless, the techno poser era is over. In fact, it has been over since mid-2022.
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