Facebook Messenger has laid off 50 employees, once again says it is all for efficiency

A year back, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced that the company will be focusing on efficiency and that would result in several changes. Overtime, Meta's "year of efficiency" turned out to be rather bad news for employees, as many of them lost their jobs. And now, Meta has reportedly carried out layoffs once again. The Facebook Messenger team, as per reports, has laid off around 50 employees as the company focusses on efficiency all over again.

As per a Business Insider report, the layoffs were a part of Meta's reorganisation of Facebook Messenger as well as its operations. A Meta spokesperson, as per the report, declined to comment on the layoffs and just said that the company's efficiency efforts were underway.

As mentioned already, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's commitment to efficiency, termed the "year of efficiency" in 2023, included thousands of layoffs and role eliminations. Despite this being initially a one-year initiative, it has been extended indefinitely, contributing to a cultural shift at Meta. As per reports, managers are now actively seeking ways to cut costs and streamline teams, causing a constant sense of anxiety amongst some employees.

Last month, it was reported that Meta had recorded a revenue growth of USD 134.90 billion after laying off thousands of employees. During an earnings call, Zuckerberg talked about the benefits of Meta becoming a "learner" company. He also said that there was a robust engagement across various apps and talked about the launch of new products such as Threads, Ray-Ban smart glasses, mixed reality in the Quest 3 headset, and intensified efforts in artificial intelligence (AI).

Zuckerberg had also said that his vision is a future where the company's success results in a world-class AI assistant for every user. He also talked about the necessity of hardware, like smart glasses, to facilitate interactions with AI systems.

Meanwhile, several Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Threads were hit with a global outage recently. Many users had complained that they were logged out of their Facebook accounts, and couldn't see any new posts on Instagram and Threads. Meta had acknowledged the outage and had assured users that it was working on a fix.

Several users took to X and expressed how they were concerned that their account had been hacked. Elon Musk too, had mocked Meta over the outage. In about an hour, all apps resumed their normal operations.