Employees at Meta, the newly renamed parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, now refer to themselves as Metamates.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg reeled out a set of new corporate standards that Meta would follow during a virtual all-hands meeting at the firm on Tuesday. One of the most significant is the tagline “Meta, Metamates, me,” which designates the priority level in which Meta personnel should put their personal interests versus the well-being of their colleagues and the organization.
Metamates will have some new values in the future. Meta’s direction to “move fast” is being expanded to “move fast together,” “be bold” is now “build awesome things,” and the value system now includes a “focus on long term impact,” according to Zuckerberg.
Facebook’s corporate value of “be open” has been replaced with “live in the future,” and “be direct and respect your colleagues” has been replaced with “be open.” Finally, Zuckerberg stated that Meta employees should not “nice ourselves to death.”
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who will soon be promoted to chief technical officer from his current position as vice president of augmented and virtual reality at Meta, claimed on Twitter that the Metamates concept was inspired by the famous physicist and author Douglas Hofstadter, whom an employee “cold emailed” for ideas. In addition, Bosworth noted that it was based on the Navy motto “ship, shipmates, self,” which is at least partially a reminder not to sink to death and does not sound sexual at all.
The rebranding of Facebook to Meta and its massive shift from products to a new, three-dimensional “metaverse” has spurred charges that the company is using buzzwords to cover its unpleasant history.
“Meta, Metamates, Me is about being good stewards of our company and mission. It’s about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates. It’s about taking care of our company and each other,” Zuckerberg explained the new corporate principles on his Facebook website, saying the Metamate language is about communal responsibility for joint success.
