"The headwinds are fierce": Meta alerts employees about tough times ahead in leaked internal memo

Meta, formerly Facebook, has informed their employees that the company is looking at a period of slower growth during the second half of 2022. The information comes via a leaked internal memo courtesy of Reuters. The memo was prepared by Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox.

“I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce. We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets,” Cox explains in the memo.

Per Cox, the biggest factors that are reducing revenue growth include “signal loss” and the current “macroeconomic situation”. The term “signal loss” here refers to the hit Meta took on ad revenue due to privacy changes. To counter this, Cox states that the company is prioritizing “monetizing Reels as quickly as possible and investing in AI” as well as “doubling down” on Shops Ads.

Finally, the memo also explains six categories where Meta is looking to invest further. These include Metaverse, AI, Reels + Discovery Engines, community messaging, privacy, and monetization. Meta increasing investment in Reels, Facebook’s attempt at short-form video content first popularized by TikTok, is no surprise as the feature has been a tremendous success. Cox notes that “time spent on Reels overall has more than doubled year over year both in the US and globally, with 80% of the growth since March coming from Facebook.”

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