Meta Completes Another Round of Layoffs in its ‘Year of Efficiency’
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta completed yet another round of layoffs Wednesday, what is likely the final batch of job cuts the company announced in March.
This is the third sweep of cuts the company has made over the past few months as part of what CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has termed the “year of efficiency.”
To date, Meta has made staggered cuts in November 2022, March, April, and now May 2023. In March, Zuckerberg estimated that 10,000 more cuts were still to come in the proceeding months, and another 11,000 jobs were culled back in November of last year.
Today’s layoffs appear to impact Meta’s Irish workforce substantially, according to Reuters. This development comes just days after the company was fined $1.3 billion for what the Data Protection Commission considered improper data transfers from Meta Ireland to the U.S. regarding EU citizens.
While last month’s layoffs focused on the tech side — with cuts made to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs — May’s cuts are were expected to impact the business side, according to a March blog post about Meta’s efficiency plans for the year. Last month, amid the company’s third go at reductions, an affected employee told CNBC, “Meta plans to cut business-facing roles, such as finance, legal and HR, beginning in May.”
Further, Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” will see Meta hold off on filling about 5,000 of the currently open roles in the company and will restructure what’s left of the of the staff to focus “on flattening our orgs.” Lower priority projects will be canceled.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success,” Zuckerberg said in the March post. “They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.”
And while hiring and transfer freezes at Meta are expected to lift following restructuring, the tech CEO was clear that the year of efficiency will mean operating with fewer jobs overall going forward. Vox reported that Meta had approximately 86,000 employees at the end of 2022, making the tens of thousands of jobs equate to a significant percentage of staff lost.
Prior to today’s latest round of layoffs, Meta also saw a number of upper management and vice president-level employees depart the company, according to Business Insider, something sources told the publication had become “constant.”
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
