Meta to let go of 10,000 employees in second round of layoffs

Wow! 10,000 employees are to be rendered jobless in Meta’s second round of layoffs. While we were still smarting over 11,000 Meta employees laid off in the company’s first round of layoffs announced in November 2022, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is reducing its workforce by around 10,000 people and to closing around 5,000 additional open roles that it hasn’t yet hired.

The Meta CEO announced that the layoffs were part of the company’s restructuring plans focused on flattening its organisational structure, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing its hiring rates.

Anyways, Innovation Village announced in February 2023 that another round of layoffs was expected since it was rumoured that the company would make a restructuring announcement in March, after it had finished conducting employee performance reviews.

The Meta layoffs will be in phases staring with the recruiting team, then the tech groups in April and the business groups in May.

Mark said that the goals of “Meta’s Year of Efficiency” are: “(1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long term vision.”

He added that “our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more. I’ve tried to be open about all the work that’s underway, and while I know many of you are energized by this, I also recognize that the idea of upcoming org changes creates uncertainty and stress. My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.”

“Here’s the timeline you should expect: over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates. With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted. We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”

Mark ended the message by saying the he recognizes that sharing plans for restructuring and layoffs months in advance creates a challenging period. “But last fall, we heard feedback that you wanted more transparency sooner into any restructuring plans, so that’s what I’m trying to provide here. I hope that giving you a timeline and principles for what to expect will help us get through the next couple of months and then move forward as we implement these changes that I believe will have a very positive impact on how we work.”

In an unrelated announcement made today via Twitter, Stephane Kasriel leading Commerce and Fintech at Meta, stated that the company was “winding down” its involvement with NFTs. He announced the company’s plans to discontinue its work with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Facebook and Instagram.