Zuckerberg urged Meta staff to reserve judgment until they see how the new system is implemented, adding, “I’m actually quite optimistic that this is going to end up being a better system.”
Layoffs
“The right thing to do is just rip the Band-Aid off,” Zuckerberg said of the upcoming round of performance-based layoffs, as reported by Entrepreneur. “I think in a lot of ways, it is a nicer thing to do for people who are probably not going to end up making it, anyway.”
The company said earlier this month that it will slash 5% of its workforce, or some 3,600 employees, Feb. 10.
Artificial intelligence
As he did during the earnings call, Zuckerberg touted the Meta AI digital assistant, predicting that it will reach 1 billion users by year-end and adding, “I think whoever gets there first is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history.”
He also said AI agents will take over some work at the company, such as writing software. When asked whether that move would lead to more job cuts, he replied that it was “hard to know” and that while some roles may become redundant, it could result in hiring more engineers to make AI more productive, adding, “The nature of what engineering is in the future will be different than it is today.”
DeepSeek
Chinese-based open-source AI model DeepSeek came up quite a bit during the earnings call, and Zuckerberg addressed it during the all-hands meeting, saying, as reported by Entrepreneur, that he does not believe it will affect Meta’s spending on AI, but it is “interesting when there’s someone who does something better than you … We can not only observe what they did, but we can read about it and implement it, so that’ll benefit us.”
Plugging the leaks
Finally, Zuckerberg vented about events like Thursday’s all-hands consistently being leaked, saying during the meeting, as reported by 404 Media, “Everything I say leaks. And it sucks, right? I want to be able to talk about stuff openly, but I am also trying to like, well, we’re trying to build stuff and create value in the world, not destroy value by talking about stuff that inevitably leaks.”
He added, “There are a bunch of things that I think are value-destroying for me to talk about, so I’m not going to talk about those. But I think it’ll be good. You all can give us feedback later. Maybe it’s just the nature of running a company at scale, but it’s a little bit of a bummer.”
Shortly after the meeting, Meta chief information security officer Guy Rosen fired off an internal memo threatening “appropriate action, including termination,” against employees who leak information, writing, “When information is stolen or leaked, there are repercussions beyond the immediate security impact. Our teams become demoralized, and we all waste time that is better spent working on our products and toward our goals and mission.”