WHEN MARK ZUCKERBERG declared 2023 “the Year of Efficiency” for Facebook parent Meta Platforms, several questions seemed unavoidable: Aren’t companies supposed to be efficient every year? If this is the Year of Efficiency, what were all the previous years—the Years of Squandering? Is Zuckerberg suggesting Meta can return to profligacy in 2024?
Most pointedly: If Zuckerberg had discovered efficiency a few years earlier, would the 21,000 layoffs planned or carried out since last November have been necessary?
Similar questions nag other tech giants—Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce—plus other players that in total have announced layoffs of more than 150,000 employees in the sector in 2023. We heard little talk of efficiency when tech stock prices were rocketing to giddy all-time highs in the waning days of 2021. Now many of those
