Meta is preparing for another round of job cuts, according to a report from the Financial Times. Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that there was uncertainty over budgets and the company’s future workforce. The job cuts are expected to take place around March, but it is not known how people might be affected.
The lack of clarity has led staff to comment that not much work is being done because managers were unable to plan ahead, the report said. Certain budgets that would normally have been finalized by the end of the year are still unfinished, and decisions that would normally take days to be signed are now taking a month in some cases.
Meta did not immediately respond to AapkaDost’s request for comment.
The report comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month during an earnings call with analysts that the company plans to continue to control costs. He promised a “year of efficiency” and said Meta would be more proactive about cutting low-priority, low-performance features. Zuckerberg noted that Meta would flatten its organizational structure and “remove some layers of middle management to make decisions faster.”
In November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its global workforce. The cuts were the largest in Meta’s history and impacted multiple departments within the company, with recruiting and business teams most affected. At the time, the company said the hiring freeze would last until early 2023, with only a “small number of exceptions”.
While Meta is clearly not the only company to announce layoffs in the past year, it is one of the few to extend its previous layoffs. For example, Amazon originally said it would lay off 10,000 employees, but later expanded that number to 18,000. In addition, Coinbase recently laid off 950 employees, having already laid off 1,100 employees last June.
The news comes as Meta announced today that its chief business officer, Marne Levine, is stepping down after 13 years with the company. During her time at Meta, Levine served as the first chief operating officer at Instagram and also served as the vice president of global public policy at Facebook. Meta said Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky will take on expanded roles as senior sales and partnership leaders going forward, reporting to COO Javier Olivan.