Facebook owner Meta starts final round of layoffs

[May 24, 2023]  By Katie Paul
 
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Meta Platforms Inc started carrying out the last batch of a three-part round of layoffs on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, as part of a plan announced in March to eliminate 10,000 roles.   

Morning commute traffic streams past the Meta sign outside the headquarters of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc in Mountain View, California, U.S. November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Peter DaSilva

Meta in March became the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs, after showing more than 11,000 employees the door in the fall. The cuts brought the company's headcount down to where it stood as of about mid-2021, following a hiring spree that doubled its workforce since 2020.

Some employees took to platforms such as LinkedIn on Wednesday to announce that they were laid off in a round that was expected to cut deeply into the ad sales, marketing and partnerships teams.

Meta shares were down 0.4% in premarket trading.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in March said that the bulk of the layoffs in the company's second round would take place in three "moments" over several months, largely finishing in May. Some smaller rounds could continue after that, he said.

Overall the cuts hit non-engineering roles most heavily, reinforcing the primacy of those who write the code at Meta. Zuckerberg pledged in March to restructure business teams "substantially" and return to a "more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles."

Even among cuts aimed specifically at technology teams, the company eliminated non-engineering roles like content design and user experience research most severely, according to executives speaking at a company town hall afterward.

About 4,000 employees lost their jobs in the April layoffs, Zuckerberg said during the town hall, following a smaller hit to recruiting teams in March.

Meta's layoffs followed months of waning revenue growth amid high inflation and a digital ad pullback from the pandemic e-commerce boom.

The company also has been pouring billions of dollars into its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs unit, which lost $13.7 billion in 2022, and a project to whip its infrastructure into shape to support artificial intelligence work.

(Reporting by Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Kenneth Li and Mark Porter)

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