Meta’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg, has confirmed that the company will further reduce its workforce by 10,000. This is coming just four months after the company laid off 11,000.
Zuckerberg in a memo to the company’s staff on Tuesday said in addition to reducing the company’s size by 10,000, it will also be closing about 5,000 additional open roles that have not been filled. He said the restructuring and layoffs in Meta’s tech groups would start in April and the process would impact its business groups in May.
The layoffs will cut across the different companies owned by Meta, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He, however, noted that after the ongoing restructuring to flatten the company, Meta plans to lift the hiring freeze in each of its groups.
The timelines: Zuckerberg also reeled out the timelines of the company’s restructuring plans, which he said will be implemented by the end of this year.
- “Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring 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. 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.”
Tough decision: While noting that it would be tough to let go of the company’s talents that will be impacted by the layoffs, Zuckerberg thanked them for their dedication and efforts in building the company.
- “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.
- “After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group. Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model. We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.”
Zuckerberg had earlier in the year hinted at further layoffs as he talked about the company becoming more efficient and removing some jobs. He added that since the company reduced its workforce last year, “one surprising result is that many things have gone faster. In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower-priority projects.”
