Meta is cutting jobs yet again, after laying off 11,000 members of its workforce in November 2022. In the latest round of job cuts, 10,000 people will be let go. With this move, the workforce strength of Meta will be reduced to about 66,000. That means, about 25 per cent less than what it was in September 2022.
The parent company of Facebook also intends to close 5,000 open roles for which hiring hadn’t taken place.
The cuts will take place over the next few months, as per a post by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook.
First, the technology divisions will be restructured, as early as next month, followed by the same exercise in the business divisions by the end of May, 2023. He admits in his post that these latest changes as a result of ‘restructuring’ may even take till the end of the year to come into effect completely.
Following the first layoff round last year, Zuckerberg had admitted that they had overhired during the pandemic, amidst the digitalisation spree. In fact, the tech major had almost doubled its workforce strength in the March 2020 to September 2022 period.
However, given the ‘return-to-office’ and offline work, followed by shrinking advertising budgets and growing fears of recession, Meta’s growth became a lot slower than expected. Add to that the growing pressures of competition, and Meta realised that it has to take drastic measures as the economic slowdown may continue for a while.
Meta’s profits have reportedly dipped drastically and the Company has experienced revenue drop for the third successive quarter.
The Company, however, hopes to focus on ‘efficiency’ in 2023. Does that mean more jobs may be cut? We can only wait and watch.
