Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has revealed it plans to cut around 10,000 jobs globally, just four months after it axed 11,000 workers.
The group’s founder and boss, Mark Zuckerberg, told staff in a company blog that Meta is also looking to ditch about 5,000 open job vacancies as part of his Year Of Efficiency push to slash costs and restructure the firm.
Meta will first trim the size of its recruiting team, with staff in this division expected to be told where the cuts will be made on Wednesday, followed by layoffs in its tech groups in late April, before taking the axe to roles across its business groups in late May.
Mr Zuckerberg said: “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.”
It follows Meta’s announcement last November that it was cutting 11,000 jobs out of its 87,000-strong global workforce.
Those cuts were expected to mean as many as 650 job losses in the UK and around 350 at risk in Ireland.
But Meta said on Tuesday it would not provide a breakdown of where the latest job cuts would come worldwide.
Mr Zuckerberg said: “I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long-term vision.”
The California-based firm last month posted lower profits for the final three months of 2022 after it took a hit from a slump in the online advertising market, wider economic woes and increasing competition from rivals such as TikTok.
Mr Zuckerberg warned it would face trading pressures for “many years”.
“I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.
“Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation. Given this outlook, we’ll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success.”
Meta joins a raft of rivals, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google owner Alphabet, in trimming their workforces on fears of a slowdown in demand as the US and global economy slows.
Google’s parent firm said in January it was laying off 12,000 workers, just days after software giant Microsoft said it was cutting about 10,000 staff.
Mr Zuckerberg said he hoped to complete the latest jobs cull “as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead”, but also cautioned that it may take until the end of the year to complete changes in some areas of the business.
He added that the firm plans to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each business group once the restructuring is complete.
As part of the changes, the group plans to cut out layers of management to “flatten” the organisation, which will see a number of managers “become individual contributors”.
Meta will also report back on its analysis of hybrid working in the summer but urged staff to “find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person” as it believes “in-person time helps build relationships and get more done”.
About the Author: Jonathan Thomas
