Facebook parent to begin laying off another 11K employees in multiple waves next week

Meta (formerly Facebook) looks all set to lay off another 13 per cent, or roughly 11,000 jobs, in its second round of job cuts and the first wave is likely to start next week that will hit non-engineering roles hard. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, Meta Platforms is planning “additional layoffs to be announced in multiple rounds over the coming months”.

It would be roughly the same magnitude as the 13 per cent cut to its workforce last year, the report said late on Friday.

“The company is also expected to shut down some projects and teams in conjunction with these cuts,” the report mentioned.

The job cuts will hit projects on wearable devices at Reality Labs, along with Meta’s hardware and Metaverse vertical that is bleeding billions of dollars at the moment.

However, the final count of the cumulative job cuts expected over the second quarter isn’t clear yet.

“We’re continuing to look across the company, across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluate whether we are deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities,” Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said at an Morgan Stanley conference on Thursday.

“This is going to result in us making some tough decisions to wind down projects in some places, to shift resources away from some teams,” Li added.

After firing 11,000 employees in November last year, Meta is planning to reduce headcount further in its “year of efficiency” as envisioned by its Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In his latest quarterly earnings call with analysts, Zuckerberg said that “I just think we’ve entered somewhat of a phase change for the company”.

He said that global headcount steadily climbed for nearly two decades, making it “very hard to really crank on efficiency while you’re growing that quickly”.

— With inputs from IANS