Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has announced that it would lay off around 4,000 employees as it restructures teams and works towards founder Mark Zuckerberg’s objective of increased efficiency.
The Facebook parent company informed managers that job losses would be announced on Wednesday. According to an internal message, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs — which contains the company’s virtual reality projects and Quest hardware — will all be affected.
The decision is part of a cost-cutting drive that will ultimately result in the elimination of 10,000 jobs at the corporation, in addition to the 11,000 job layoffs announced by Zuckerberg in March. A second wave of layoffs is scheduled for May.
In November, Meta cut almost 13% of its employees or approximately 11 000 jobs. It also extended a hiring moratorium into the first quarter, which has punctuated job and expense cutbacks from other Silicon Valley companies.
According to Zuckerberg’s statements, the company’s goal is to become more lean and rebalance its ratio of technologists and engineers to business and administrative workers.
Read also: Meta to lay off 10,000 workers after laying off 11,000 in 2022
The layoff is part of Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency” plan
The memo circulated to managers indicates that teams will be reorganised and various remaining employees will be reassigned to work under new managers. Meta will ask all North American employees who can work from home to do so on Wednesday in order to have time to process the news, the document said.
A company spokesman declined to comment, pointing to Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency” post in March that said, “we expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May.” — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP
It remains unclear which African countries will be affected, if any, despite the company having offices in South Africa and Nigeria, where some of its engineers work. Lori Goler, Meta’s head of people, mentioned in the memo about the layoff that “some countries will not be impacted” but did not specify further.
Meta to lay off 10,000 workers after laying off 11,000 in 2022
The document said that the layoff notice will be sent by email. Employees are now in a condition of uncertainty, waiting for possible layoff notices between 12 and 1 PM WAT today, Wednesday. However, the uncertainty does not stop there, as Meta has scheduled another wave of layoffs for May, which will have an effect on the company’s profitability.
Meta, like other large IT businesses, is implementing stringent cost-cutting measures. These employee cutbacks are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition for a “year of efficiency” in 2023. In a February Facebook post, Zuckerberg said, “Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, cancelling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates.”