Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said only the best will be able to work at Meta after seeing good results from his “year of efficiency” in 2023, and investors are already rewarding him for it.
The company’s stock was up more than 21% after Meta reported a 25% jump in year-over-year revenue for the fourth quarter on Thursday. Partly fueling that increase may be Zuckerberg’s commitment to a “leaner” operating structure, which he said will be “a permanent part of how we operate going forward.”
A year ago, Zuckerberg announced his year of efficiency, explaining that the company was stopping what had been at that point headcount growth of 20% or 30% every year, after revenue showed negative growth for the first time in 2022. Thousands of layoffs later, the company’s headcount shrank by 22% and Zuckerberg said the company has been able to “execute better and faster.”
In a possible sign of future stability, or maturity and slower growth depending on who you ask, the company also announced its first cash dividend on Thursday, emulating other tech giants Microsoft and Apple. It also announced a $50 billion share buyback.
As for hiring, Zuckerberg said on Thursday’s earnings call that the company will work through a “recruiting backlog” that has piled up in part owing to previous layoffs, but he added that new hires would be “relatively minimal compared to what we would have done historically.”
Already, the company has removed some layers of its management and has asked some managers to reapply for positions or be fired.
Zuckerberg said keeping things “lean” is the best thing for the company to do culturally, and that making its efficiency changes permanent will help Meta weather “what is a somewhat unpredictable and volatile period over the next five or 10 years.”
The Meta CEO said the changes will help employees work faster in the near term and improve the company’s performance in the years to come. For now, he’s patting himself on the back.
“Our communities are growing, and our business is back on track,” he said Thursday.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
