Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here
, Zuckerberg said on the June 30th call, according to a recording obtained by The Verge. And 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 just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.
Almost immediately after the Zuckerberg all-hands, one question took hold in the minds of employees: Who exactly are the people who don’t belong here?
I don’t see people around me slacking whatsoever
, one employee wrote on Workplace. I see smart hard workers. Honestly, hearing some of you don’t belong here
from a leader instead of Here are the challenges. Let’s rally together and overcome them.
is disheartening and might not be the best way to get this point across.
The term became a meme in no time. “Coast, Coasters, Me”, a riff on Meta’s recently introduced “Meta, Metamates, Me” mantra, made the rounds on Workplace. Employees mocked up posters for the walls of Meta’s headquarters that asked Should you be here?
in bold, all-caps red letters, while others posted mockups of the question on literal coasters. Look at this dude coasting
, one employee wrote above a picture of Zuckerberg hydrofoiling on a lake while holding the American flag.
Alex Heath & David PierceHonestly, if there’s anyone who shouldn’t be working at Facebook, that’s Mark Zuckerberg himself. He’s the one who dreamt up this pivot to the metaverse, and approved, if not proposed, the near-term chasing after short videos to compete with TikTok. But with his controlling interest, he can never be removed by the board, unless he steps down voluntarily. This finger-pointing towards low-level employees is bad form, demoralizing, and ultimately poor leadership. A good leader should assume his own errors in judgement and those of his subordinates, and propose a vision and plans how to rectify them. Blaming slackers for flawed strategic decisions and macroeconomic headwinds will only lead to more strategic failures and exacerbate the company’s problems.
More bad press has surrounded Instagram recently, as celebrity sisters Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian criticized Instagram, urging the app to stop mimicking TikTok – which clearly hit a nerve, because Instagram head Adam Mosseri felt the need to defend recent changes in a Twitter video. It certainly feels like a crisis moment for the Meta conglomerate; then again, Facebook has weathered similar crisis before, despite the many who wrote them off at the time. I doubt this time will be any different.
Update: a week of criticism later, Instagram decided to walk back the recent test design focused on video, at least temporarily:
Redesigns often incur the wrath of users who are hostile to change, but in this case the high-profile dissatisfaction was backed up by Instagram’s own internal data, Mosseri said. The trend toward users watching more video is real, and pre-dated the rise of TikTok, he said. But it’s clear that people actually do dislike Instagram’s design changes.
For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn’t great
, he said. So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward.
Casey Newton
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