Meta, the parent company of popular social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is reportedly planning another round of layoffs as part of its efforts to cut costs and adapt to the ongoing economic slowdown.
According to a report by Bloomberg News on Monday evening, the social media company is looking to axe more employees in its fresh round of layoffs. Meta has already given “subpar ratings” to thousands of its employees during its latest performance review, which hints at a fresh culling of the company’s remaining workforce. Earlier, managers at the company gave around 10% of employees a rating of “meets most “ – the second-lowest rating at Meta.
This is not the first time that Meta has resorted to job cuts to improve its financial performance. In case you missed it, Meta had laid off 13% of its workforce – which amounted to more than 11,000 employees – near the end of the previous year following lukewarm guidance for its fourth-quarter earnings.
While a spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the matter, the report says that a fresh round of layoffs is being done to meet the company’s financial goals. The employees are expected to be sacked as early as this week. Furthermore, Meta is looking to flatten its organization and giving buyout packages to managers while slashing teams that it deems to be non-essential.
This further prolongs the layoff season that has gripped numerous enterprises and firms over the past year. According to layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi, 463 tech companies have a total of sacked 1,25,977 employees this year, and analysts expect this trend of layoffs to stay throughout the year. The companies in question include the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Twitter, all of which enacted mass layoffs during the past few months.
The latest round of layoffs at Meta is hardly unexpected, given that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had earlier indicated that the company would be cutting down on costs this year. Terming 2023 as the “Year of Efficiency,” he had informed that Meta would remove “layers of middle management” and cut projects that are yet to yield returns. These projects, so far, are yet to include those under Meta’s Reality Labs division, which has continued to bleed over the quarters.
Already under mounting pressure from investors to improve its bottom line, the company has been investing heavily in new technologies such as AR and VR as parts of its metaverse ambitions, but these efforts have yet to translate into significant revenue growth.
