Meta plans to cut its workforce by an additional 10,000 people and retire about 5,000 open positions 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 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 it was cutting about 11,000 roles as the social networking giant continues what it calls a “year of efficiency.” Combined, this means Meta has effectively laid off — or plans to lay off — about a quarter of its workforce since the end of last year.
Facebook’s parent company said it expects the latest restructuring efforts to begin in April in its technology groups, followed by its business groups in May.
“In a small number of cases, it may take until the end of the year to complete these changes,” Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to staff that was subsequently released to the public. “Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will be in touch with more details. This will be tough and there is no escaping it.”
In a separate SEC filing, Meta said it expects full-year 2023 spending to be between $86 billion and $92 billion, a figure it lowered from a previous estimate that had risen to about $95 billion. . Much of this is due to “cost-cutting measures” associated with the restructuring, including severance payments.
Zuckerberg added that after the latest restructuring efforts are completed, the company will lift the hiring freeze for its various groups.
In addition, Zuckerberg also pointed to early internal analysis indicating that engineers who initially joined Meta in person outperform those who came to work remotely, an early sign — perhaps — of what might be a tougher stance on remote work. .
Flatten
While Zuckerberg didn’t go into much detail about what kinds of roles or “lower priority projects” will be eliminated, Meta revealed yesterday that it was winding down support for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook to focus on other initiatives for the generating revenue. In his memo today, Zuckerberg also talked about “flattening” the various organizations and divisions that make up the Meta Platforms Inc. company. exists, which means that some layers of management need to be removed.
“It is common knowledge that each layer of a hierarchy adds delay and risk aversion to information flow and decision-making,” he wrote. “Each manager typically reviews the work and smooths out any rough edges before sending it further up the chain. In our Year of Efficiency, we will flatten our organization by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will be asking many managers to become individual contributors. We will also have individual contributors reporting at almost every level – not just the lowest level – so that the flow of information between the people doing the work and management will be faster.”
Similar to the messages surrounding the previously announced round of layoffs in November, Zuckerberg was quick to emphasize that it was building for the long haul, with a continued focus on AI and the metaverse. While his pivot to the metaverse in 2021 was largely seen by many as a huge misstep, one that’s nowhere near ready to generate the kind of rewards his shareholders might enjoy, there’s little to indicate that Zuckerberg’s staunch metaverse conviction will change any time soon. .
“Our biggest investment is advancing AI and building it into all of our products,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We have the infrastructure to do this on an unprecedented scale and I think the experiences it enables will be amazing. Our industry-leading work to build the metaverse and shape the next generation of computing platforms also remains central to shaping the future of social connectedness.”