Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth laments lack of focus in the company

In a blog post, Andrew Bosworth looks back fondly on how “incredibly focused” Facebook was during its initial days.

A security guard stands watch by the Meta sign outside the headquarters of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc in Mountain View, California, U.S. November 9, 2022. (Image credits: REUTERS/Peter DaSilva)

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Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, one of the company’s first employees, wrote in a personal blog post that the company was more focused in its early days. This comes at a time when Meta’s problems are becoming more apparent, including slowing user growth across its platforms, stiff competition from TikTok, and a rocky start to the company’s Metaverse dreams.

In a post titled “Focus,” Bosworth compared the startup life from the initial days to how things are now at the company, describing it as “pretty brutal.” Work times were lengthy at “120 hours per week,” he ate poorly and “gained a lot of weight,” and slept with his phone next to his head “in case something broke.”

While Bosworth admits he doesn’t miss the startup days, he does look back fondly at how “incredibly focused” the initial team was. “You had real conviction that the thing you were doing was the most important thing.”

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He gave an example saying that “at fireside chats with Mark,” whenever people would ask about having the company support any cause, Mark would always say no.

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“He would explain that it isn’t that we don’t care about good causes, it is that our comparative advantage wasn’t going to be making good donations. It was building products. And we were building a product that was free to use and would be leveraged successfully by nearly every nonprofit to further their goals.”

That changed over time as the company got bigger. More employees pushed Facebook to contribute and the company “stopped saying ‘no,’” because there was enough money to do it. “I picked a cultural example here but the exact same thing happens in our products at a larger scale and with higher stakes,” added Boz.

While he did not directly name the platform, Bosworth seemed to throw some light on the reason behind Facebook’s problems: “The customers you acquire for some niche feature will be outraged when you remove it. And employees might be upset to hear that a perk they love is going away. But to survive as a company you must be willing to focus and prioritise, because attempting to please everyone has a well-publicized result.”

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Meta investors have been urging the company to focus on its core business and cut spending on its metaverse ambitions. The company in November announced it was laying off 11,000 employees to cut costs amid a poor macroeconomic outlook and the company’s declining share in the advertisement market. It also plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter.