Meta Workplace Novirodriguezcnbc: Meta, the global IT services firm, has lost a significant number of executives in recent months. The company said that senior executives from its Workplace division and Novi division resigned or announced their departure plans within the next six months.
According to published reports, Meta’s VP of engineering Nancy Gilson is soon to leave after 20 years with the company. In her last interview with Forbes she hinted that “the reasons for my departure are not happy ones. If I knew that my future would be as uncertain as it ended up being, I would not have signed on for three more years this past August.”
MetaWorks VP and global head of transformation Satyen Sangani will also leave the company after 18 years. In a LinkedIn blog post, he said that “as a manager, even though you try to keep yourself away from politics, over time you get embroiled in it. It is generally easier to do the right thing when there aren’t too many people looking at you. And, unfortunately too many people at Meta were looking at me.”
Demis Hassabis, the founder of M-Brain (which became Meta), became the CEO in 2016 and left in 2018 after a string of disappointing financial results.After his departure, Meta’s shares plunged to a record low. Thomas Brown, who assumed the role of interim CEO in March this year, announced his resignation earlier this month.
Values, Culture and Governance
Meta’s recently appointed interim CEO, Thomas Brown, retired from his role as COO of Google X in 2014 and moved to MetaWorks in 2016. He has also been involved in early stage funding of start-ups. In 2018 he was named Ernst & Young’s APAC regional director for startups and innovation, where he led the Asia team for D&B and EY Financial Solutions.
Meta raised $157 million in a Series C round in 2015 with the guidance of Khosla Ventures, which helped it to expand its customer base in Asia. But the company has been struggling financially since then. Its shares have plummeted by nearly 80 per cent since March this year, when Brown took on the interim CEO role. The company posted an annual loss of about $100 million for FY 2017-18 and expects to record a similar loss for FY 2018-19.
To address the financial state of the company, Laxman Narasimhan and Divya Nagarajan (both from the founding team) resigned from their CEO and COO roles. While both of them are sticking with the company, they are being replaced by tech veteran Padmanabhan Gopinath.
As per an ANI report on May 2, 2019, Meta has lost 14 senior executives in December 2018. Meta is also planning to shift its headquarter to India.