Meta employees prepare for more layoffs as budgets are delayed: report
Facebook parent company Meta last November carried out its biggest layoffs ever, laying off about 11,000 employees. But it seems more jobs will be cut.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a Facebook post on Feb. 1, “We wrapped up last year with some tough layoffs and some team reshuffles. As we did so, I made it clear that this is the beginning of our focus on efficiency, not the end.” During a conference call the same day, he announced that 2023 will be Meta’s “year of efficiency.”
While meta-workers wonder who is being considered inefficient, the company has delayed the completion of several teams’ budgets, the company said financial times. Employees who spoke to the British newspaper on condition of anonymity said morale at the company is low and little work is being done in some teams as they await unusually slow budget decisions.
Meta declined comment when contacted by wealth.
“Honestly, it’s still a mess,” said an FT staffer. “The year of efficiency starts with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing.”
Other workers told the newspaper the next job cuts are expected next month.
Middle management has reason to be nervous.
‘More proactive in cutting projects’
Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post, “We are working on flattening our organizational structure, removing some layers of middle management to make decisions more quickly, and using AI tools to help our engineers be more productive. As part of this, we will be more proactive when it comes to trimming projects that aren’t working or are no longer as important, but my primary focus is on increasing efficiency in delivering on our top priorities.”
One of those priorities is the Metaverse, a largely unrealized virtual world that has underwhelmed users and could take years to become profitable if it ever does. The company’s Metaverse division, Reality Labs, reported a loss of $13.7 billion for 2022, up from a loss of $10.2 billion in 2021.
Investors have tried to pressure Zuckerberg to scale back Metaverse investments, to no avail.
In December, John Carmack, a virtual reality pioneer, left his senior consulting role at Meta, where he worked on the Metaverse. He tweeted on the way out, “I’ve always been quite frustrated with the way things are done on FB/Meta. Everything necessary for spectacular success is there, but it is not put together effectively.”
However, the slow progress of the Metaverse and three consecutive quarters of year-over-year sales declines aren’t holding back share buybacks at Meta. In its most recent earnings announcement, Meta said it increased its share repurchase authorization by $40 billion, noting that it repurchased about $28 billion over the past year.
Many tech companies, which hired too many workers during the pandemic as demand for the services surged, have carried out large-scale layoffs in recent months, sparking conflicting headlines as the latest U.S. jobs report shows the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years .
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