Meta Platforms Inc., run by Mark Zuckerberg, today began the latest round of layoffs as part of the company’s restructuring plan that will see around 10,000 job cuts. According to reports, ad sales, marketing and partnerships departments could be hit with the ax this time.
Meta announced a three-part round of layoffs in March 2023, announcing 10,000 more layoffs in a series of rounds after laying off around 11,000 employees in November last year. They were the largest layoffs in the company’s 18-year history after Meta’s revenue fell dramatically in 2022.
Against the backdrop of this development, the company’s shares were down 0.4% in the premarket hours.
Zuckerberg said the restructuring plans focus on downsizing the organization, eliminating lower-priority projects and lowering hiring rates.
As of November 8, 2022, the company employed 87,000 people worldwide. “Overall, we anticipate reducing our team size by approximately 10,000 people and filling approximately 5,000 additional open positions that we have not yet hired,” he previously said.
Mark said Meta’s timelines for “international teams will also look different” and that local leaders will share more details. After the reorganization, Meta plans to lift the hiring and transfer freezes in each group, and the company plans to complete the “analysis” later this summer.
Though the company reported a 4% year-over-year revenue decline in the quarter ended December 2022, Meta’s full-year 2022 earnings were $23 billion.
Zuckerberg anticipates that “this new economic reality” will continue for many years to come. “Higher interest rates mean the economy runs leaner, more geopolitical instability means more volatility, and more regulation means slower growth and higher costs of innovation,” he said in a previous post.
In 2022 and the first five months of 2023, there were massive layoffs in companies worldwide. The technology sector in particular has been hit the hardest as companies struggle to cut costs in the face of falling sales.
Telecoms giant Vodafone Group last week announced it would cut 11,000 jobs over the next three years and simplify both headquarters and local markets as the Berkshire-based company aims to become “leaner and simpler”.
Earlier this month, LinkedIn and Cognizant laid off 716 and 3,500 employees, respectively. In January, Microsoft announced it would lay off about 10,000 employees, or 5% of its workforce, by the end of the third quarter of 2023. Amazon laid off 27,000 employees. In addition, Google has laid off about 12,000 jobs, resulting in one of the largest job cuts in the past year.
