It seems Meta can’t catch a break after it was announced that the tech giant will be doing another round of layoffs, affecting thousands of employees. These layoffs are branded under the name “year of efficiency” due to the company’s plans to restructure the whole company.
A press release was published in the Meta Newsroom, written by Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg. The post featured an update on Meta as a company. It announced its plans to restructure and “cancel lower priority projects.” It also announced that it will be reducing its hiring and recruiting teams before “restructuring its tech groups.” The reason for these changes is due to “improve its financial position” so it’s able to execute its long-term vision.
Zuckerberg predicted that it may take until the end of 2023 for all of this restructuring to be complete and that the timeline for the international team will be different compared to the local team.
“Here’s the timeline you should expect: over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates. With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted.
“We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details.”
The Meta CEO also revealed how many of its employees would be affected. At least 10,000 are expected to lose their jobs. However, it plans to hire 5,000 people for roles that it hasn’t filled up just yet. Zuckerberg shared how “tough” this will be and that there is “no way around it.” He also wishes the best for everyone who’s leaving and that he’s been very grateful for their efforts.
“Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”
“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. 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.”
The rest of Zuckerberg’s announcement through the published statement shared future plans for a hybrid workplace, making technology the main priority, and flattening the company hierarchy by “removing multiple layers of management.” The company also announced plans to implement AI in its workflow to “help engineers write better code faster” and to automate some of the workload.
Meta has been laying off people since last year. Back in November, around 87,000 Meta employees were affected, with Zuckerberg commenting in a companywide meeting that there are employees that “realistically shouldn’t be here.” It also revealed that the company stock price dropped to its lowest since 2016.
It’s currently unknown if this would be the last we’ll hear of Meta announcing layoffs. But hopefully, its plans to restructure would create some sort of stability for the company in the future.