Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is starting a new round of layoffs on Wednesday
Divisions that will be affected includes teams working on Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and virtual reality division Reality Labs among others, according to Goler. She advised some employees not to enter the office unless it was essential to their role, according to the memo. Layoff decisions were made by senior executives as part of the broader restructuring effort, Goler added.
“This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” she wrote. “It will take time for everyone – both those who leave and those who stay – to process tomorrow’s news and I know that teams will show up for each other with compassion, support and care.”
Within an hour, thousands of employees Tuesday night commented or reacted to Goler’s memo on an internal forum. Many workers posted greeting and crying face emojis, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company is expected to lay off what are likely to be thousands of highly qualified employees — such as engineers and other technical staff — who help build the company’s products, according to people familiar with the matter. The cuts are a rare moment of vulnerability for engineers at Meta who have long enjoyed job security, high salaries, autonomy and freedom to work on the projects they want, amid fierce competition for talent in Silicon Valley.
Meta spokesman Dave Arnold confirmed the memo was sent but declined to comment.
Employees who are affected will be notified on Wednesday morning, Goler wrote, though she added the process may vary for workers outside of North America. Meta executives on Wednesday are also expected to reveal how their divisions might be reorganized after the layoffs. The company will tell employees if they get a new manager, according to the memo.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that the company would announce layoffs and a restructuring of technical teams in late April, followed by cuts in support business roles in late May.
In total, Meta expects to cut around 10,000 positions and will not fill 5,000 previously expected positions. In March, Zuckerberg hinted that the cuts would disproportionately affect company support staff, claiming the rebalancing would create an “optimal ratio of engineers to other roles” to ensure “our company remains primarily technologists.”
The latest layoffs build on workforce cuts in November that reduced 11,000 jobs, or about 13 percent of Meta’s workforce, in the first large-scale layoffs in the company’s history.
The looming job cuts have created anxiety among Meta’s workforce, prompting many to question the management and direction of the company in recent months, The Washington Post previously reported. Some remaining employees say they are actively looking for new jobs, while others are concerned about how their jobs may change in the future.
Meta faces a number of business threats, including competition for advertising dollars and users from the short-form video network TikTok. New privacy rules from Apple harm the company’s ability to offer targeted advertising. Meanwhile, some digital advertisers have reduced their spending amid rising inflation and slowing demand in the e-commerce market.
In the face of these challenges, Zuckerberg has said that one of the company’s top priorities is to become leaner and more efficient. Top executives along with people in human resources, legal and finance departments have been asked to redraw the org charts of internal organizations at Meta, according to people familiar with the matter case, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about internal matters. In addition to the cuts, the company is also deflating the company’s hierarchy to reduce the number of management layers between interns and Zuckerberg, as well as canceling lower-priority projects.
Despite its financial challenges, Meta – which changed its name from Facebook more than a year ago – says so continues to innovate. In February, Zuckerberg announced that he was creating a new internal task force designed to “turbocharge” the company’s investment in generative artificial intelligence. The company is also pushing its short-form video product, Reels, to compete with TikTok and is exploring building another decentralized social media network to compete with Twitter.
And Meta is still plowing money into its major effort to build out immersive digital realms known as the metaverse. Zuckerberg believes people will want to work, shop and socialize through augmented and virtual reality-powered devices, which he has argued will be the next major computing platform.
But Meta has said it expects operating losses for Reality Labs, the division that works on virtual reality offerings. The company has struggled to grow an audience for virtual reality and has said much of the technology needed to power the metaverse will take years to build.
