Facebook (now known as Meta) has announced thousands of jobs are to be cut from technical teams across its main platform, Instagram, Reality Labs, and WhatsApp. The continuing cuts are part of Mark Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency.”
Vox reports that according to an internal memo, Facebook is planning another wave of mass layoffs on Wednesday that will affect a number of technical teams. According to a source, the job layoffs might affect 4,000 people.
“This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” Lori Goler, Facebook’s head of people, said in the memo. Employees in North America will be notified by email on Wednesday morning, while the timelines for other countries will vary.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the layoffs as part of his ambitions for a “year of efficiency” in 2023. In a Facebook post last month, Zuckerberg acknowledged the difficulty of the situation, stating, “This will be tough and there’s no way around that. Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates.”
Following the 11,000 job cuts in November, Zuckerberg said in March that the business would eliminate 10,000 additional positions in the upcoming months. Now, the company is set to be impacted by yet another wave of layoffs in May. About 86,000 individuals were employed by Meta by the end of 2022.
The continued layoffs at Facebook are representative of a larger trend in the tech sector as Silicon Valley experiences a downturn in the economy and transitions from a culture of extravagant spending to one of cost-cutting measures. The previous year has seen several layoffs at major software businesses, with Facebook’s being particularly traumatic because the company issued the cuts in waves.
Employee morale has declined despite the stock market’s good reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s past layoffs. Vox reported in January that employee optimism and confidence in the company’s leadership were at their lowest levels in recent memory. A Facebook employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed their exhaustion, saying, “I think people are getting tired of all this and are just ignoring this now. It’s too stressful to keep worrying when you can’t do anything about it.”
Read more at Vox here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan