Meta starts final round of layoffs, around 5,000 jobs likely to be affected

Meta starts final round of layoffs, around 5,000 jobs likely to be affected

Several employees working in teams such as marketing, recruiting, engineering and corporate communications took to LinkedIn on Wednesday to announce that they were laid off

Meta starts final round of layoffs, around 5,000 jobs likely to be affected
Business Today Desk
  • May 24, 2023,
  • Updated May 24, 2023, 10:06 PM IST

Facebook owner Meta Platforms on Wednesday started the final round of layoffs in the company, said Reuters citing a source familiar with the matter.  

The bulk of the layoffs in the company’s second round would take place in three ‘moments’ over several months, said Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive at Meta in March.

In the beginning of the year, Meta became the first Big Tech company to announce the second round of mass layoffs.

The job cuts have hit mainly the non-engineering roles in the company like marketing, recruiting, engineering, corporate communications and partnerships.  

Most of the employees who have been eliminated at Meta have reported about their layoffs on LinkedIn.

An employee who used to work in the creator marketing department of Instagram claimed on LinkedIn that 5,000 of her other colleagues have also been fired, reported India Today on Wednesday. Several other posts suggest that the layoffs have been done at Instagram, Facebook and other services of Meta.  

The first round of layoffs took place in November 2022 when the social media giant announced 11,000 job cuts. This constituted about 13 per cent of the company’s work force.

The second round of layoffs started in March, where around 10,000 jobs were supposed to be eliminated, but reportedly only 4,000 were laid off.

Currently, the third round of layoffs will start and 6,000 people will be sacked at Meta.

People have already started expressing their disappointment in the company. Some people on social media also claimed that they are waiting for their own turn to get laid off.

Meta’s layoff followed months of slow revenue growth amid the high inflationary environment. The slow growth could also be attributed to the digital ad pullback from the pandemic e-commerce boom.

The company also poured billions of dollars into its Metaverse initiative. Metaverse project is being handled by Reality Labs unit of Meta.

The company lost $13.7 billion in 2022 in the project to level up the infrastructure of Reality Labs unit to support the artificial intelligence work.

With inputs from Reuters

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