Washington, March 11: Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, is planning another round of job cuts over the next few months, according to media reports, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
The additional layoffs will be announced in multiple rounds over the coming months, which, according to people familiar with the matter, would total about the same magnitude as last year’s 13 percent cut in the workforce. Also read | WhatsApp says it will exit the UK market if forced to stop end-to-end encryption for users under online safety law.
The first job cuts are expected to be announced next week, with non-technical positions expected to be hit hard, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Some projects and teams are also expected to be shot down. Meta Layoffs: Tech firm gives ‘below average’ performance ratings to thousands of employees, layoffs more likely
Meta cut about 11,000 jobs, or about 13 percent of its employees, last year. This year’s cuts are expected to reach the same proportion of the remaining ones, the people said, although the final tally of the cumulative cuts expected in the second quarter isn’t clear yet.
Projects being cut include some wearable devices that were in the works at Reality Labs, Meta’s hardware and metaverse division, the people said, beating a short-term pullback from efforts to popularize virtual- and augmented reality products, even as longer-term research efforts continue, WSJ reported.
Meta shares rose more than 2 percent in after-hours trading after the Wall Street Journal reported on the proposed cuts. “We continue to look at the entire company, both the app family and Reality Labs, and really evaluate whether we’re directing our resources to the opportunities with the most leverage,” Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, said Thursday at the Morgan Stanley 2023 Technology. Media and Telecom Conference.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg previously said that 2023 would be a “year of efficiency” at Meta and that some projects at the company would likely be shelved.
The ongoing cuts are notable given that Zuckerberg had forecast in October that the company would end in 2023 with about the same number of employees as then.
The company tried to encourage further turnover through the performance appraisal process, WSJ reported.
Technology companies like Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have shed thousands of jobs this year and are continuing as profits retreat from pandemic-induced highs. Almost 300,000 workers have been laid off since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts in the industry.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, LatestLY staff may not have modified or edited the content.)
