Months after it laid off nearly 11,000 employees, world’s largest social media company Meta, has announced its plans to cull its workforce by an additional 10,000. Roles pending new hiring will also see major downsizing.
In an internal memo (which has been made public), CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will lay off 10,000 employees, as well as close around 5000 additional roles that it has not hired for yet. This restructuring and layoffs across its tech groups are expected to begin in April, while business groups will be impacted a month later. Shares of Meta were up by about 4.81% after the news was made public to currently trade at $189.63.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts,” Zuckerberg wrote in the memo. He refrained from elaborating on which roles will be eliminated in the fresh round of layoffs, though he talked about the “flattening” of the various organizations at Meta.
The broader restricting at the company, according to the memo by Zuckerberg, goes beyond the simple elimination of numerous roles across its organization. It will also start canceling its lower priority projects since it “underestimated the indirect costs” of the same. In some small cases, Zuckerberg said that it might take the end of the year to complete the changes. For now, the company will let the recruiting team members know whether they have been impacted by this restructuring or not.
Once the restructuring at its organization has been completed, Meta will resume recruitments and transfers, as well as aim to complete its analysis from its “hybrid work year of learning” by this summer. These efforts are the latest by the company to flatten and reduce its expenses amidst a challenging economy. Furthermore, he added that a “leaner” organization would execute its higher priorities faster and that people would be more productive in such a scenario.
This development also comes during the “Year of Efficiency” – as Zuckerberg had pitched 2023 earlier – where the social media company plans to cut down on expenses, remove “multiple layers of management,” or shut down projects that are not performing well or failing to yield returns. (And yet, it continues to pour in billions in its Reality labs division in pursuit of its metaverse ambitions. The division, on the other hand, continues to bleed and is yet to yield significant returns).
