Meta, the company initially known as Facebook, is laying off 10,000 more employees, describing the move as a restructuring designed to flatten the company's organizations while improving efficiency and sustainability. The move comes right after having already gone through massive layoffs not long ago, with Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook and Meta's CEO, dubbing 2023 the "Year of Efficiency."
It was only one year ago, in 2022, after a rather financially disastrous year for Facebook's parent company, that Meta decided to lay off over 13% of its staff. Now, in a new Facebook post that Meta's CEO describes as an update on the "Year of Efficiency," Zuckerberg characterizes the plans as a restructuring with the aim of flattening the company's organizations to improve communications and decision-making processes.
And while the creator of Facebook goes to lengths to explain how this restructuring is a good thing for the company, the unsavory news is still there, "Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people." An additional 5,000 open roles that haven't been filled yet will also be closed, he added. And while Zuckerberg claims in the post that the restructuring is in big part aiming at decreasing recruiting rates and that the recruiting team will be the most affected, he also concedes that the company will be canceling lower priority projects as well.
After the reduction of personnel following Meta's 2022 mass layoffs, Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency" restructuring plan will end up affecting an even larger proportion of the company's employees this time around. According to the "Year of Efficiency" update post, restructurings and layoffs are expected in tech groups in late April, and then in business groups in late May. The post also notes that it may take through the end of 2023 to complete all the expected changes.
Although Meta has been going through a financial rough patch over the past couple of years, it is not the only tech company to have resorted to mass layoffs to remain profitable. Back in January, Microsoft announced that it was cutting some 10,000 jobs. And other companies in the gaming industry have gone through similar processes after experiencing revenue losses in 2022.
While Facebook's founder acknowledges that news of massive layoffs brings a lot of uncertainty and stress to the workplace, he hopes the changes will make Meta a better tech company as well as improve its financial performance. Zuckerberg also expects that the changes will allow the company to allocate more resources to other important projects, like bringing a VR version of Notorious B.I.G. to a concert in the Metaverse, at a time when other tech companies are cutting their losses.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook