Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the parent company of social media giant Facebook, announced on Tuesday he would fire 10,000 of the company’s employees, equating to 13 percent of its workforce, in a cost-cutting effort in the wake of a total economic meltdown in the tech sector.
In a memo announcing the move, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote:
“Meta is building the future of human connection, and today I want to share some updates on our Year of Efficiency that will help us do that.”
“The goals of this work are: (1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision,” he said.
Staff affected by the cull will be the company’s tech and business employees and recruiting teams.
Zuckerberg also announced he would be closing 5,000 open job listings.
“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 explained.
“With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted.”
“We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May,” he continued.
“In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” he added.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg concldued.
Zuckerberg explained the move to fire 10,000 employees is aimed at improving the company’s financial performance while maintaining product quality.
“Flatter is faster,” he explained. “It’s well-understood that every layer of a hierarchy adds latency and risk aversion in information flow and decision-making. Every manager typically reviews work and polishes off some rough edges before sending it further up the chain. In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management.”
The move comes almost two months after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced it would axe 12,000 jobs.
AT THE TIME, alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that the losses affect teams, including recruiting, corporate functions, engineering, and product teams.
Last year, E-commerce giant Amazon also announced major layoffs.
The Daily Fetched reported that Amazon’s layoffs impacted more than 18,000 employees, the highest number for a major tech company.
Salesforce announced it would lay off 8,000 workers, 10 percent of its workforce.
Last November, Facebook began a series of large-scale layoffs affecting thousands of employees due to a large drop in share price.
Meta forecasted a weak holiday quarter, wiping about $67 billion off its stock market value.
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