Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is planning to cut 10,000 jobs in a second wave of mass redundancies. The announcement follows the layoff of 11,000 employees in November 2022. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the cuts part of a “year of efficiency” and acknowledged that they would be “tough.” Additionally, the company will not fill 5,000 vacancies. Mr Zuckerberg cited a slowdown in revenue and various factors affecting Meta, such as higher interest rates in the US, global instability, and increased regulation. While the company still made over $23bn in profit in 2022, earnings were down 4% year-on-year for the three months to December 2022.

Mark Zuckerberg cited higher interest rates, geopolitical instability, and increased regulation as contributing factors to the slowdown. The move follows similar cost-cutting measures by tech companies like Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet, which have cut thousands of jobs this year. According to layoffs.fyi, more than 128,000 tech industry jobs have been cut in 2023.

Meta CEO said that the company’s recruitment team will be the first to learn whether they will be affected by the 10,000 job cuts announced earlier this week, with notifications expected on Wednesday. He also outlined the timeline for notifying other teams, with tech groups to be informed in late April, business groups in late May, and some changes expected to continue through the end of the year. The job cuts come as many tech companies, including Google and Amazon, have been forced to balance cost-cutting measures with the need to remain competitive due to the current economic climate. According to layoffs.fyi, which tracks job losses in the tech sector, there have been over 128,000 job cuts in the tech industry so far in 2023. As many of these companies rely on advertising revenue, the falling ad revenues and reduced spending power of users have created a challenging economic environment.

The beginning:

Meta, the social media giant, has its European headquarters in Dublin and employs around 3,000 people directly, with many more contractors in Ireland, according to local reports. In the UK, Meta employed more than 5,000 people as of December 2021, as reported by Companies House. However, the company has not yet revealed how many redundancies it will make in either country. Kevin Poulter, an employment lawyer at Freeths, emphasized the importance of Meta following UK laws on redundancies. He warned that the tech job market’s confidence and the ability to move easily between established and start-up companies have been undermined following the recent round of lay-offs by Meta and Twitter. This could cause other tech firms to follow suit.

Meta’s statement on the lay-offs was markedly different from Elon Musk’s defence of Twitter’s lay-offs the week before. While Musk claimed Twitter had no choice due to its significant financial losses, Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility and expressed regret. This was an unusual move for Zuckerberg, who is known for his focus on work rather than interpersonal relations. With his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, no longer by his side, Zuckerberg is staking his company’s future on the creation of the metaverse, a virtual world in which he believes people will spend their work and leisure time. The success of this project could take five to ten years, but if Zuckerberg is correct, Meta will emerge as a leader in the new era of the internet.

The move comes after the company’s significant slowdown in revenue in 2022, resulting from higher interest rates, global geopolitical instability, and increased regulation. The job cuts will impact various departments, with the recruitment team being the first to receive notifications. Employees affected by the restructuring will receive redundancy payments and have the opportunity to ask questions. Meta aims to focus on high-priority growth areas such as artificial intelligence, advertising, and the metaverse, but will also reduce costs by decreasing spending on buildings and increasing desk-sharing. The tech industry has faced challenges due to a slowing global economy, inflation, and the end of pandemic-driven growth, with companies like Stripe, Lyft, and Amazon also announcing large-scale layoffs.