Apps across Meta and its metaverse division will see some internal projects shuttered and teams dissolved as executives at the company abide by Mark Zuckerberg's new efficiency mantra.
Susan Li, who was promoted last year to CFO of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said Thursday during a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley that work inside the company to "streamline" operations is "ongoing." Mark Zuckerberg last month declared 2023 Meta's "year of efficiency" and said he wanted to flatten layers of management. In recent weeks, employees have seen changes made to manager ranks inside the company, dubbed "the flattening." And a second round of layoffs affecting thousands of workers is widely expected to come down soon, as Insider reported.
"We're continuing to look across the company, across Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluating," Li said. "Are we deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities?"
Family of Apps is the division that includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, while Reality Labs is the division responsible for augmented and virtual reality projects and products, or those related to Meta's metaverse ambitions.
"This is going to result in us making some tough decisions to wind down projects in some places and shift resources away from some teams," Li added.
The CFO went on to point to the decision late last year to "shut down" Meta's Portal device, which was part of Reality Labs. Meta's enthusiasm around the metaverse, which Zuckerberg earlier defended as the future of his company despite it losing tens of billions of dollars so far, seems to have dulled in the face of investor pressure to reign in costs and improve its core advertising business.
"This is really hard," Li said. "These are all great products and great ideas, but they aren't necessarily the highest priority place for us to invest now. We're gonna be in an ongoing reevaluation and reprioritization process."
Overall, Li said that such changes, including the "streamlining of management layers," will "translate into further cost savings" for the year. Meta already cut its cost outlook for the year by $1 billion, according to its fourth-quarter financial results.
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