Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday the company will lay off an additional 10,000 employees in upcoming months as the fluctuating economy has cast a shadow of uncertainty over the broader tech and social media industry.
The latest round of layoffs follows a previous announcement from the company in November when 11,000 workers were cut in what Zuckerberg called at the time the “last resort.” Those cuts amounted to nearly 13% of Meta’s total staff.
Zuckerberg has previously designated 2023 as a “year of efficiency” for Meta, and despite continuing to spend billions advancing its metaverse and AI projects, these job cuts indicate where the company is looking to do its trimming.
“Here’s the timeline you should expect: 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,” Zuckerberg said in his blog post announcing the cuts. He added that the company plans to freeze hiring on 5,000 open positions it once sought to fill.
The first wave of layoffs will begin this week and impact Meta’s recruiting team, followed by a second wave for tech roles in April and a third focused on business positions in late May. “My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Meta is far from the first major tech firm to announce job cuts in the face of a grim U.S. market, and even this second round of layoffs does not set it apart.
In 2023 alone, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all announced plans to cut more than 10,000 workers apiece, and the larger tech industry has lost more than 95,000 employees in the last year.
Zuckerberg’s company will continue to bet its future on its stake as the first to develop the metaverse, a gamble that has yet to pay out. He owed Meta’s current position to a bevy of conditions, but marked that the current reality may not leave so fast.
“We should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” Zuckerberg wrote.
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