- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told his employees that the Facebook owner is preparing to cut a further 10 000 jobs.
- Last year Meta let go of 11 000 employees or around 13 percent of the company’s workforce.
- The cuts come as Meta begins new restructuring efforts, like flattening management hierarchy, all in the name of added efficiency.
In an announcement to his employees, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg outlined the company’s plans for the so-called “Year of Efficiency,” a two-part objective that will see Meta’s financial performance improved so it can “execute its long term vision.”
Part of this mission to make Meta more efficient is to further reduce the size of its employee base by around 10 000 people, and a further 5 000 yet-to-be-filled roles at the tech giant will be closed. Zuckerberg detailed what the timeline would look like for Meta staff.
“Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, cancelling 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,” he writes.
These latest 10 000 cut jobs will be added to an initial 11 000 employees laid off at Meta, around 13 percent of its workforce, which owns and operates WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
The first cuts came last year in November when Meta joined the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter and Alphabet in axing thousands of employees.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta will begin handing out cuts and begin restructuring in April for employees in its tech groups, and in May for employees in its business group. Employees will apparently find out on 15th March if they will be affected or not.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg writes. “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.”
Further, Zuckerberg explains that Meta will be removing multiple layers of management for added efficiency. He writes that more management hierarchy means that information flows slower, and decisions take longer to be made.
“As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors. We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.”
Meta will also begin cancelling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and make all its organisation as lean as possible to reduce costs, time and workload.
Finally, Zuckerberg doubles down that while Meta is serious about hybrid work, building in-person relationships between employees is better for productivity. He writes that Meta will continue to research and refine the hybrid work of its employees.
“I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person,” he writes.
Despite the tough economic conditions globally that have spurred layoffs across the industry, like higher interest rates, geopolitical instability and more regulations “leading to slow growth,” Zuckerberg explains that Meta has created a new financial plan that enables the company to continue investing in its future plans as well as deliver sustainable results.
“The changes we’re making will enable us to meet this financial plan.”
Zuckerberg didn’t share exactly what the company’s future plans are, but it is clear that it won’t be anything to do with NFTs. A new report showed that Meta has been shuttering its NFT support projects since last year.
It could very well continue to be the Metaverse, and the company’s virtual reality hardware products, like the Meta Quest Pro. This is in spite of the fact that Zuckerberg’s mission to grow the Metaverse every year inches closer to becoming a pipe dream.
[Image – Dima Solomin on Unsplash]
