"Meta to cut another 10,000 jobs and cancel ‘low priority projects’", 14 March 2023

Meta plans to cut its workforce by another 10,000 people and withdraw around 5,000 open roles that it had yet to fill, company co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday, confirming recent rumors that another round of layoffs was imminent.

Zuckerberg also said that the company will cancel “lower priority projects,” adding that he “underestimated the indirect costs” associated with these initiatives.

The announcement comes just four months after Meta revealed that it was eliminating about 11,000 roles as the social networking giant pushes ahead with what it’s calling a “year of efficiency.” Combined, this means that Meta has effectively laid off — or plans to lay-off — roughly one-quarter of its workforce since the tail-end of last year.

Facebook’s parent firm said it expects the latest restructuring efforts to start in its tech groups in April, followed by its business groups in May.

Zuckerberg added that after the latest restructuring efforts are complete, the company will lift its hiring freeze across its various groups.

Additionally, Zuckerberg also pointed to some early internal analysis that indicates engineers who initially joined Meta in an in-person capacity perform better than those who joined on a remote basis, an early sign — perhaps — of what could be a toughening stance against remote work.

Flattening

While Zuckerberg didn’t go much into the specifics around what types of roles or “lower priority projects” will be eliminated, Meta did reveal yesterday that it was winding down support for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook to focus on other monetization initiatives. In his memo today, Zuckerberg also talked about “flattening” the various organizations and divisions that constitute Meta Platforms Inc. corporation, which will mean removing some of the management layers.

Similar to the messaging around its previously announced round of layoffs in November, Zuckerberg was quick to stress that it was building for the long-term, with a continued focus on AI and the metaverse.