Meta cuts 10,000 jobs in second round of layoffs: Report

Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms announced on Tuesday that it will cut 10,000 jobs. It is the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of layoffs as the industry braces for a deep economic downturn.

Meta’s stock jumped 6 percent due to the news. The widely expected job cuts are part of a broader restructuring that will also see the company shed 5,000 jobs, cancel lower-priority projects and smooth middle management levels.

“I think we should prepare for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to staff.

Concerns about an economic downturn caused by rising interest rates have prompted a series of mass layoffs at various companies in America: from Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Big Tech companies like Amazon.com and Microsoft.

Meta, which is pouring billions of dollars into building a futuristic metaverse, has struggled with a post-pandemic slump in ad spending by companies worried about the economic outlook.

In response, Zuckerberg has promised to make 2023 the “Year of Efficiency.” In the latest move, Meta expects spending in 2023 to be between $86 billion and $92 billion, down from a previously forecast range of $89 billion to $95 billion.

Zuckerberg said Meta will eliminate multiple layers of management, ask managers to become individual assistants and give them fewer than 10 direct reports, which in turn would make the organization “more likeable.”

“We don’t expect the number of personnel to grow so quickly, but it makes more sense to utilize the capacity and integrity layers of each supervisor as much as possible,” he said.

Meta’s decision in November to cut its workforce by 11,000 was the first mass layoff in its 18-year history. It had 86,482 employees at the end of 2022, which is 20% more than a year ago.

The technology industry has laid off almost 290,000 workers since the beginning of 2022, and about 40 percent of them will come this year, according to the layoffs.fyi tracking website.

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