Meta's technology chief reportedly told employees that higher headcount has led to 'untenable' slow movement, including meetings that take a month to schedule

• Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees in an email that "that adding headcount "makes everything slower," according to The Verge.
• He added that Meta had "solved too many problems by adding headcount."

In a massive company like Meta, things don't always move quickly. Yet some in Meta's top ranks believe that its massive size is directly responsible for its tendency to move too slow.

According to The Verge's Command Line newsletter, Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told the 18,000 employees in its Reality Labs division via an email before the holidays that the company has solved too many problems simply "by adding headcount." The issue with that, Bosworth noted, is that more headcount usually means more overhead.

"And overhead makes everything slower," he wrote.

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Reality Labs is the division of Meta that contains its metaverse and virtual reality units.

According to Command Line, Bosworth believes Meta's inflated ranks have led to scheduling delays, too.

"A meeting with 50+ people that took a month to schedule. Sometimes there is even a 'pre-meeting' with its own document," Bosworth wrote. "I believe the current situation is untenable."

In November 2022, the company laid off more than 11,000 employees, or approximately 13% of its staff, with Reality Labs being one of the divisions that faced cuts. At the time, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg also noted that the company would cut discretionary spending, and its hiring freeze would extend into the first quarter of 2023.

Meta's market value has dropped 47% in the last 12 months. The company also said it expected losses from Reality Labs to grow in 2023, after reporting its financial results for the third quarter of 2022.

Neither Bosworth nor Meta immediately responded to Insider's request for a comment.

Read the entire Command Line newsletter here.