New round of redundancies hits Meta; another 10k jobs axed
A fresh round of redundancies has hit Facebook’s parent company, Meta, as the tech giant looks to reduce its headcount by another 10,000 over the next few months.
In a message to employees, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said those departments subjected to the layoffs include recruiting, tech and business teams. The “restructurings” will start as early as today and extend into late May.
Apart from laying-off existing employees, the company will also pull around 5,000 open roles that it hasn’t filled yet.
Meta Australia declined to add further comments on the announcement.
The news comes after Meta already dismissed around 11,000 workers globally in November last year. It was yet another step towards a “year of efficiency”, which Meta vowed to achieve in 2023 in its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings announced in February.
Zuckerberg noted that “flatter is faster” and “leaner is better” when it comes to organisational structures and priorities. These principles led to the decisions to flatten layers of management and reduce the number of “lower priority projects”.
He previously flagged that Meta’s “high priority growth areas” include AI discovery engine, ads and business platforms, and a “long-term vision for the metaverse”.
“For most of our history, we saw rapid revenue growth year after year and had the resources to invest in many new products. But last year was a humbling wake-up call,” Zuckerberg said.
“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.
“Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation.
“Given this outlook, we’ll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success.”
One of Meta’s shareholders has previously urged the company to reduce headcount costs by at least 20%.
The company’s share price jumped 7.25% yesterday to $194.02 (A$290.38). Its market capitalisation is $503.02 billion (A$752.83 billion) as of 15 March.
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Darcy Song was a reporter at Mumbrella, covering media owners, adtech and social platforms. She left in October 2023.
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