California: Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees; first big tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs. Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 workers, marking the second round of significant job cuts announced by the tech giant in four months, CNN reported.
The latest layoffs, announced on Tuesday, come after Meta said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13 percent of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in the company's history, CNN reported. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the job cuts will take place "over the next couple of months." We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May," he wrote.
In a "small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes."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," Zuckerberg said. As of September 2022, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per securities filings. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced Tuesday, that would bring Meta's headcount down to around 66,000, CNN reported.
Among projects that will be cut are some wearable devices that were in the works at Reality Labs, Meta's hardware and metaverse division, the people said, suggesting a near-term retreat from efforts to popularize virtual and augmented reality products even as longer-term research efforts continue, reported WSJ earlier this month.
Meta shares rose by more than 2 per cent in after-hours trading after The Wall Street Journal reported the planned cuts. "We're continuing to look across the company, across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluate are we deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities," Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said Thursday at the Morgan Stanley 2023 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. (With Agency Inputs)
