The layoff season isn’t yet over for the social media company owned by Facebook, Meta. After firing more than 111,000 workers in the year 2022 Meta will be laying off multiple times in the next few months. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the planned layoffs could equal the 13 percent reduction in jobs that was announced the previous year. The report further states that non-engineering positions will be affected at this point.
The Wall Street Journal reports that reductions will be announced over multiple rounds, and will be roughly the same as the reduction of 13 percent in its workforce in the last fiscal year. In addition to other positions, Meta is likely to reduce non-engineering positions most and is anticipated to end some teams and projects. Meta reduced about 11,000 positions which is about 13 percent of their workforce last year. The new cuts are anticipated to be in the same percentage of employees who are still employed.
The report also mentions that certain wearable devices, which were created in the company of Reality Labs, Meta’s hardware, and metaverse division will be taken off the market. This indicates that Meta is shifting away from the popularity of virtual and augmented reality products in the near term although research in this field will continue in the longer term. The initial round of cuts is scheduled to be announced by the end of next week and the number of reductions over the course of the second quarter isn’t yet certain.
“We’re continuing to look across the company, across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluate we are deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities. This is going to result in us making some tough decisions to wind down projects in some places, to shift resources away from some teams,” Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said Thursday at the Morgan Stanley 2023 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.
Prior to that, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg declared that 2023 would be the year of efficiency. He also suggested that certain projects at Meta could be shut down.
In the past, WSJ reported that the Meta employees were not rated highly during their performance evaluation. Meta provided about 10 percent of its employees a score in the range of “meets most”, which is the second-lowest score at the company. The lowest rating, “meets some”, is not one that Meta gives very often. These ratings were used to encourage quality work and to encourage long-term thinking according to a spokesperson for the company.
