Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Meta starts final round of layoffs

NEW YORK — Meta started carrying out the last batch of a three-part round of layoffs on Wednesday (May 24), according to a source familiar with the matter, as part of a plan announced in March to eliminate 10,000 roles.

Morning commute traffic streams past the Meta sign in Mountain View, California on Nov 9, 2022.

Morning commute traffic streams past the Meta sign in Mountain View, California on Nov 9, 2022.

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

NEW YORK — Meta started carrying out the last batch of a three-part round of layoffs on Wednesday (May 24), according to a source familiar with the matter, as part of a plan announced in March to eliminate 10,000 roles.

Meta in March became the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs, after showing more than 11,000 employees the door in the fall. The cuts brought the company's headcount down to where it stood as of about mid-2021, following a hiring spree that doubled its workforce since 2020.

Some employees took to platforms such as LinkedIn on Wednesday to announce that they were laid off in a round that was expected to cut deeply into the ad sales, marketing and partnerships teams.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in March said that the bulk of the layoffs in the company's second round would take place in three "moments" over several months, largely finishing in May. Some smaller rounds could continue after that, he said.

Overall, the cuts hit non-engineering roles most heavily, reinforcing the primacy of those who write the code at Meta. Mr Zuckerberg pledged in March to restructure business teams "substantially" and return to a "more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles."

Even among cuts aimed specifically at technology teams, the company eliminated non-engineering roles like content design and user experience research most severely, according to executives speaking at a company town hall afterward.

About 4,000 employees lost their jobs in the April layoffs, Mr Zuckerberg said during the town hall, following a smaller hit to recruiting teams in March.

Meta's layoffs followed months of waning revenue growth amid high inflation and a digital ad pullback from the pandemic e-commerce boom.

The company also has been pouring billions of dollars into its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs unit, which lost US$13.7 billion (S$18.4 billion) in 2022, and a project to whip its infrastructure into shape to support artificial intelligence work. REUTERS

Related topics

Meta tech layoff

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.