Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced major austerity moves Tuesday, including the planned layoffs of 10,000 employees. The announcement, made via a Facebook post, follows the Facebook and Instagram parent company’s November announcement that it would ax 13 percent of its total workforce (or 11,000 workers). It’s all part of the vaguely Maoist-sounding “Year of Efficiency” — Zuck’s proclamation for 2023.
There will be a company restructuring “focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates,” Zuckerburg wrote in the Facebook memo Tuesday.
Zuckerberg added that 5,000 new job openings will also be closed, and the recruiting team will be the first to suffer layoffs, since Meta will be hiring less. Layoffs for the tech and business teams will follow in April and May.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” wrote the CEO, who also touted his idea of a “flatter” organization, which would involve removing “multiple layers of management.”
Zuckerburg cited the world economy, competition, and slowed growth as some of the reasons for the cuts. Meta’s troubles have been caused by over-hiring during the pandemic and pressure from major competitors like TikTok and Apple, which has recently interfered with Facebook and Instagram’s ability to target ads due to privacy changes in its IOS software, according to the New York Times. In addition, the company also faces a decrease in digital advertising, coupled with increased regulation efforts and a push for new laws that would constrain its abilities to collect data.
The latest announcement, combined with the November round of layoffs, will see Meta shed roughly a quarter of its workforce. The company had roughly 87,000 employees, pre-layoffs.
News of the new cuts seemed to rally the company’s stock Tuesday, as shares of Meta advanced 7.25 percent at end of trading day.
Other companies in the tech sector have also announced record-breaking job cuts over the last few months. After Elon Musk took over, Twitter laid off half its workforce, giving more than 7,500 employees the boot. Microsoft also announced plans to cut 10,000 workers in January, citing economic worries. In the same month, Alphabet (parent to Google) joined the bloodletting with 12,000 planned layoffs, while Amazon also announced plans to reduce its headcount by 18,000.
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