Meta to proceed with second round of layoffs next week

Meta initiated a major round of layoffs back in November, 2022. Roughly five months in, the Facebook-owner is reportedly planning a fresh round of layoffs, according to sources familiar with the matter, according to Bloomberg.

Back in November, the company laid off 13 percent of its employees, resulting in roughly 11,000 jobs being lost. Now, in a bid to become a “more efficient organization,” Meta is laying off even more employees.

While we don’t know how many employees the company plans to layoff now, Bloomberg expects the number to be in thousands, with the company intending to finalize its plans in the next week.

Reportedly, Meta has also been trying to flatten its organization and is giving buyout packages to managers and shutting down teams that it considers to be nonessential.

Sources claim that the latest round of cuts is driven by financial targets and is separate from the “flattening” of the company, which has been ongoing for some time. The company is said to be asking directors and vice presidents to make lists of employees that can be let go. The move comes as Meta has experienced a slowdown in revenue from advertising, and has shifted its primary focus to the virtual-reality/metaverse vision.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expecting his third child soon, and thus, the company wants to finalize the layoffs in the next week, before Zuckerberg’s parental leave. The Bloomberg report suggests that employees at the company are experiencing “heightened anxiety and low morale,” considering that they might be unemployed in the near future.

Meta expanded in an unsustainable manner during the pandemic. It hired over 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021, and 15,344 in 2022. That’s more than 42,000 new employees over the course of three years, many of whom were laid off in November, and many of whom would be laid off by next week to bring the company’s spending back to a sustainable level.

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Source: Bloomberg