Report: Meta Set to Cut Thousands of Jobs

Meta is reportedly preparing to cut thousands of jobs in another round of layoffs.

The workforce reduction could come as soon as this week, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (March 7), citing sources familiar with the matter. The layoffs follow a 13% cut in November, the company’s first-ever mass layoff and part of a pattern of broader downsizing in the tech sector.

This latest round of cuts is designed to meet financial targets and is separate from Meta’s attempts to “flatten” its operations by offering buyouts and cutting nonessential teams, the sources told Bloomberg. They also note that the company has asked managers to come up with lists of employees who could be let go.

PYMNTS has contacted Meta for comment but has not yet received a reply.

The new job cuts are happening as Meta pivots toward greater efficiency, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling 2023 “the year of efficiency.”

As PYMNTS has written, concern by investors that Zuckerberg and his company had been neglecting its core business in favor of the company’s metaverse ambitions helped fuel a 64% drop in Meta’s shares last year, the worst performance in its history. Meta saw about $700 billion of its market value evaporate between October 2021 and October 2022.

And as noted here at the beginning of February, “efficiency” has been Meta’s watchword recently, with the term popping up dozens of times on the company’s last earnings call.

“We’ve entered a phase change for the company … we will be more proactive about cutting projects and increasing efficiency around executing our top priorities,” Zuckerberg told investors.

PYMNTS wrote that this new focus “could help lessen concerns that the company is overspending on its virtual reality ambitions.”

However, recent reports have painted Meta’s inner workings as anything but efficient. A story in the Financial Times last month — citing interviews with employees — said the company had delayed budgets of several of its teams.

Staffers were complaining about the lack of work getting done, with management unable to plan and a lack of clarity around budgets or headcounts.

“Honestly, it’s still a mess,” said one employee. “The year of efficiency is kicking off with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing.”

Among the company’s recent efforts to drive revenue is a pilot verification service for creators on its Facebook and Instagram platform. Meta launched Meta Verified in Australia and New Zealand in February, saying it would test the $12 per month subscription service in those countries before bringing it to the rest of the world.

“Some of the top requests we get from creators are for broader access to verification and account support, in addition to more features to increase visibility and reach,” Meta said in its announcement. “Since last year, we’ve been thinking about how to unlock access to these features through a paid offering.”