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Mark Zuckerberg 'visibly frustrated' over the question of a worker's vacation

A report says that Mark Zuckerberg didn't try to hide his irritation when an employee asked about vacation days during a meeting where the CEO of Meta said he was going to fire low-performing workers.

During a Q&A session with the whole company on June 30, Facebook's CEO said that the recent drop in the stock market "might be one of the worst downturns we've seen in recent history." He said this as he explained why the company was cutting costs.

During the virtual meeting, Zuckerberg reportedly "looked visibly frustrated" when an employee from Chicago asked if "Meta Days," which were added during the COVID-19 pandemic as extra days off, would still be around in 2023.

The Verge got a recording of what Zuckerberg said after hearing the pre-recorded question. He said, "Um, okay." "Given how I've been acting in the rest of the Q&A, you can probably guess how I feel about this."

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta has employees who “shouldn’t be here.”
Getty Images for SXSW

In the same meeting, Zuckerberg said that Meta would be setting higher standards for its employees and firing those who couldn't meet the new level of performance.

Meta
Meta enacted a hiring freeze earlier this year.
Getty Images

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said.

“Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me,” Zuckerberg added.

Meta has put a freeze on hiring and taken other steps to cut costs as it deals with a big drop in the market and invests in a costly move toward the metaverse. The stock of the company is down more than 50% this year.

At a meeting on June 30, Zuckerberg said that Meta's plans to hire engineers would be slowed by at least 30% this year. Instead of hiring 10,000 people, as was originally planned, Meta would hire about 6,000 or 7,000 people. Some jobs that are open won't be filled.

The Verge says that some of the people in the virtual meetings were shocked when Zuckerberg said that workers were at risk of being fired. The billionaire said that the company did not plan to lay off workers, but that it had not ruled out doing so either.

One employee asked on an internal messaging platform, "Did Mark just say that there are a lot of people at this company who don't belong here?"

“Who hired them?” another employee quipped.

Others lauded Zuckerberg’s shift in tone.

“This is war-time, we need a war-time CEO,” one employee wrote.

Meta
Meta’s stock is down 50% this year.
AFP via Getty Images

In a statement to The Verge, a Meta representative played down what Zuckerberg said.

Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Meta, told The Verge that if a company wants to make a lasting difference, it needs to set priorities and work hard to reach its goals. "The news about these efforts matches this focus and what we've already said in public about how we work."

At the same time, employees' trust in Meta's upper management is said to have dropped as the company faces challenges from the market and continues to face scrutiny from lawmakers over how it does business.

According to an internal survey, only 39% of Meta employees were optimistic about the company's future, and only 42% had "confidence in leadership."

The Post has asked Meta for more information.

Meta stock was down nearly 2% in early trading on Tuesday, just before a very important earnings report was due on Wednesday. The company could have its first-ever quarterly revenue drop in the second quarter. In the first quarter, it had its slowest growth since going public.

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