Meta announces 10,000 more layoffs in ‘year of efficiency’

Zuckerberg did not specify what areas of the company would be most affected by job reductions, although Meta’s recruiting team is one of the departments getting downsized, as slower hiring rates are likely to be a permanent reality at the company moving forward.

The first round of Meta layoffs affected around 13% of overall staff, and employees have been bracing for more terminations for weeks ever since Zuckerberg made publicly clear that the company was going to double down on efficiency and become leaner in every department during its last quarterly earnings call with investors last month. 

The CEO declared at the time 2023 was going to be the company’s “year of efficiency” as it aimed to become a “stronger and more nimble organization.” He added that while Meta would double down in certain competitive areas including artificial intelligence, unnecessary and underperforming projects were on the cutting board. Of the November layoffs, Zuckerberg said it was the “beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end.”

A turgid economic climate for tech companies has been especially difficult for social media platforms like Meta, which in addition to Facebook also owns Instagram and Whatsapp. Advertising revenue at the company has been slowing since last year, while investors and Meta shareholders have also grown critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to steer the company into uncharted waters with his metaverse push, first announced in late 2021.

Like many other tech companies, Meta expanded wildly during the early years of the pandemic and hired aggressively, but has since been forced into downscaling as the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to cool down the economy last year. The company had more than 87,000 employees in September, a 28% increase from the year before.