Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, has announced that it will slash its workforce by a further 10,000 jobs, having laid off 11,000 employees in November of last year.
The news of the layoffs came directly from Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, March 14. Meta’s so-called “year of efficiency” goes on.
Recruiters the first to go
With Meta looking to cull significant numbers of staff, the first teams to go will be the recruiters. The 10,000 job cuts will also be accompanied by a significant change in hiring procedures and close to 5,000 open roles will also be cut.
According to the schedule set by the company, it may take to until the end of the year to undertake all of the cuts and to completely restructure the company. Following the conclusion of the process, hiring freezes may be lifted.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not expect the redundancy process to be easy but remains committed to the decision.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” said Zuckerberg.
“It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.”
Previous layoff rounds at Meta have been accompanied by 4 months of severance pay plus an additional 2 weeks for every year of service. The previous round also included 6 months of health insurance coverage for the former worker and their family.
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. 🧵[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
Say goodbye to NFTs too
Even as Meta makes efficiency savings with its staff, the company is cutting back on features too with digital collectibles (NFTs) becoming the first casualty.
Stephane Kasriel, the Commerce and FinTech lead at Meta, explained the reason for cutting NFTs on Twitter this Monday.
Kasriel said, “Across the company, we’re looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus.”
Kasriel went on outline the future direction the company will take: “We’re going to focus on areas where we can make impact at scale, such as messaging and monetization opps for Reels.”
As part of the shift in focus, the company will seek to improve its payments app, MetaPay.
That decision seems to mirror Elon Musk’s plan for Twitter payments, as social media platforms everywhere attempt to transform themselves into financial services platforms.
Zuckerberg seeks transparency
Mark Zuckerberg is clear that he expects the coming year to be especially challenging for the company, but hopes that openness and transparency will be beneficial in the longer term.
“For most of our history, we saw rapid revenue growth year after year and had the resources to invest in many new products,” said Zuckerberg. “But last year was a humbling wake-up call. The world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably.”
The CEO went on to add that, “I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.”
Having already told many of his staff that they will be surplus to requirements, it will be interesting to see if that transparency will pay off. It’s hard to imagine Meta employees will be at their most efficient with the sword of Damocles hanging above their heads.
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