It can always get worse, says the saying. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced Tuesday that it will lay off 10,000 employees in the coming weeks. This cut, the second most significant, is in addition to the one already made at the end of last year, when another 11,000 workers were left without jobs, in an effort to make the company more competitive.
His announcement had an immediate impact on the stock market, with the shares rising 5.5%.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social network and executive director of the company, explained this decision in an email sent to his collaborators in the control panel. In addition, he also indicated that some projects will be canceled and the hiring ratio will be reduced as part of what he described as the “year of efficiency.” This means eliminating up to 5,000 incorporations that were planned.
So one of the sections that will be affected in the first place by the snip is precisely the recruiting team. This will be followed by a restructuring and layoffs in the technology groups from the end of April, while the business team will suffer the same fate in May.
“We know this is going to be tough, you don’t even have to think about it,” Zuckerberg said. “My hope is that with these organizational changes we can get out of this period of uncertainty as soon as possible and focus on the critical work ahead,” he wrote.
The November cut meant eliminating 13% of its workforce, a figure similar to that of now, in what was the first massive drop in workers after years of hiring. The company turned its course after a 2022 that turned out to be one of the most complicated financially, with a notable loss of income.
It lost around 70% of its value last year, making it one of its worst S-index performers.
According to its documentation, the reduction of employees will mean lowering expenses in 2023 of between 86,000 and 92,000 million dollars.
This initiative is in tune with the trend of layoffs by large technology companies, after they lived through their glory days during the pandemic and hired a large number of workers. Among others, Google presented the plan to terminate 12,000 workers, Microsoft 10,000, 18,000 at Amazon or 7,000 at Salesfore. In total, it is estimated that the number of layoffs will be over 250,000.
