Written By On Monday, May 1st, 2023, news broke that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, was facing a culture crisis that has led to the resignation of several top executives. The crisis stems from allegations of a toxic work environment, where women and people of color face discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
This is not the first time that Meta has been in the spotlight for these issues. In 2018, a report by The New York Times exposed how the company mishandled Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest data from millions of users without their consent. The fallout from that scandal led to increased scrutiny of the company’s policies and practices.
But this latest crisis is different. It’s not just about external issues, but also internal ones. The company’s own employees have been speaking out, using social media and internal forums to share their stories and demand change. In a leaked memo, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the problem, saying “we have a real issue with our culture and the way we treat each other.”
So, how did this culture crisis come to be, and how did Zuckerberg contribute to it?
To answer that question, it’s worth taking a closer look at the history of Meta and its leadership. Zuckerberg, who founded the company in 2004, has been the driving force behind its growth and success. But his leadership style has been the subject of criticism for years.
In 2010, former Meta executive Katherine Losse wrote a memoir called “The Boy Kings,” in which she described the company’s early days and its culture of sexism and misogyny. She wrote about how male engineers would rate the attractiveness of their female colleagues on a “hot or not” list, and how the company’s HR department ignored her complaints about harassment.
Since then, Meta has made some efforts to address these issues, such as increasing diversity and inclusion training and setting up a task force to address hate speech and harassment on the platform. But these efforts have been criticized as insufficient, and the latest crisis suggests that the company still has a long way to go.
One factor that may have contributed to the culture crisis is the company’s rapid growth. As Meta has become one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, with over 2 billion users, it has struggled to maintain its startup culture and sense of mission. Some employees have described feeling like cogs in a machine, rather than empowered agents of change.
Another factor is the company’s intense focus on growth and engagement. Meta’s business model is built on advertising revenue, which means that it needs to keep users engaged and spending as much time as possible on the platform. This has led to criticism that the company prioritizes profits over user safety and privacy.
Zuckerberg himself has been criticized for his leadership style, which some employees have described as authoritarian and lacking in empathy. In a recent article in The New Yorker, one former executive described Zuckerberg as “a dictator in a hoodie” who was “tremendously insensitive to the human costs of his decisions.”
Zuckerberg’s recent memo acknowledging the culture crisis suggests that he is aware of these criticisms and is committed to addressing them. He outlined several steps the company would take to improve its culture, including increasing transparency, creating more opportunities for employee feedback, and holding leaders accountable for creating a safe and inclusive workplace.
But it remains to be seen whether these measures will be enough to address the underlying issues that have led to the crisis. Some employees have called for more radical changes, such as breaking up the company or changing its business model. And critics outside the company have called for stronger regulation of social media platforms like Meta.
Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that Meta is facing a pivotal moment in its history.
