Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of completely converting his company to the so-called Metaverse now also has far-reaching consequences for employees: they are now supposed to appear in public under a silly name.
The CEO recently appeared before the workforce to announce a new canon of values for working in the company. In the course of this, he also made it clear to the employees that they would no longer be Facebook employees in the future, but should be referred to as “metamates”. Alex Heath, a reporter for US magazine The Verge, was there and noted that Zuckerberg shared this without a trace of humor and was therefore completely serious.
The term is probably based on Shipmate, i.e. the shipmates. However, it is questionable whether the developers and numerous other employees of the group feel similarly connected to the company as do the crew members of a ship, who usually live together in a small space for a long time and are exposed to all sorts of dangers.
– last value, and I am not making this up: “Meta, metamates, me”
A slide shows this text in bold all caps next to Zuck talking
I am told Zuck said this without laughing and explained it had to do with a story about ships and shipmates
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
February 15, 2022
However, Zuckerberg also made it clear that he expects a comparable level of loyalty from employees. As a fundamental value, he defined the order of priorities that everyone in the company has to set: “Meta, the metamates, me.” First and foremost, it must be important to everyone that the company is doing well, the individual comes last.
In the tech industry, it is quite common for the employees of well-known companies to be given a corresponding designation. However, this usually arises in common parlance and is not defined by corporate management. On the other hand, it is also much more widespread in the USA that companies would like to trim their employees down to a supposed “we’re all in the same boat” feeling.