Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced plans to lay off approximately 10,000 employees, which amounts to around 13% of its workforce. The layoffs will affect the recruiting team immediately, with restructuring of its tech and business groups to follow in April and May. This is the second round of layoffs for Meta in the past six months, with more than 11,000 employees being laid off in November 2022.
The company also plans to close about 5,000 unfilled job postings. The layoffs are part of Meta’s efforts to become more efficient and streamline its operations. The company has faced challenges from a digital advertising slowdown, increased competition from platforms like TikTok, and regulatory pressure to limit its data collection abilities. The company is also in the midst of a transition to become a “metaverse” company.
The move is part of Meta’s efforts to focus on efficiency, as announced by its founder Mark Zuckerberg. The layoffs will affect Meta’s recruiting team this week, with a restructuring of its tech and business groups to come in April and May. The announcement is the company’s second round of cuts within the past six months, with the previous round in November 2022 affecting more than 11,000 people.
The layoffs are a result of years of hiring at a breakneck pace, which led to unchecked growth. The pandemic also supercharged the use of mobile apps, leading to more growth for Meta’s family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. However, the global economy soured, and digital advertising markets contracted last year, leading to the need for cuts. Meta trimmed employee perks and is now culling employees to eliminate a layer of middle management.
Meta is not the only tech company that is trimming its ranks. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and others have also announced job cuts, citing the challenging global economic environment. Meta is also grappling with many challenges, including a digital advertising slowdown, Apple’s privacy changes to its mobile operating system, and steep competition from TikTok. Additionally, regulators are pushing for new laws that would limit Meta’s data collection abilities.
The company is also in the midst of a tricky transition to become a “metaverse” company, connecting people to an immersive digital world through virtual-reality headsets and applications. Mr. Zuckerberg sees the metaverse as the next-generation computing platform, so Meta has been spending billions of dollars on the effort and reallocating workers to its Reality Labs division, which is focused on products for the metaverse. However, it is unclear if people will want to use metaverse products, and in recent months, the public has gravitated to chatbots, which are built on artificial intelligence.
The layoffs have caused anxiety among current and former employees, who have been bracing for more layoffs for months. Many employees are wondering how they will be able to do work for the next two months while wondering if they will still have a job. The job market is also the worst that some employees have ever seen, adding to the uncertainty and anger among affected employees. Meta’s layoffs are staggered over the next two months, which is adding to employee anxiety.
In his announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg laid out a vision for streamlining the company by removing layers of management, ending lower-priority projects, and rebalancing product teams with a focus on engineering. To that end, Mr. Zuckerberg wound down efforts on building NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, a cryptocurrency-based initiative that has dropped out of favor in recent months. The moves are a response to global conditions, including increased regulation, geopolitical instability, higher interest rates, and a cooling economy. Zuckerberg added that the company should prepare itself for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.
Meta’s plan to lay off 10,000 employees is part of its efforts to focus on efficiency and streamline the company. The layoffs come amid a challenging global economic environment and numerous challenges facing the company, including a digital advertising slowdown, Apple’s privacy changes, and steep competition from TikTok.
The layoffs have caused anxiety among current and former employees, who are wondering how they will be able to do work for the next two months while wondering if they will still have a job. Zuckerberg’s vision for streamlining the company includes removing layers of management, ending lower-priority
