Ax will fall on 10,000 Facebook and Instagram employees: Zuckerberg
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to lay off more than 10,000 employees in the coming months, adding to the tech giant’s recent wave of cuts, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday.
The company also expects to close an additional 5,000 open positions that hadn’t been filled.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.”
The moves are part of a restructuring plan Zuckerberg says he hopes will make Meta “improve our financial performance in a difficult environment” as the company looks to the future.
“With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team,” Zuckerberg, 38, wrote. “We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted. We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.”
International teams will face a different time line, Zuckerberg said.
Tuesday’s developments follow Zuckerberg’s announcement of 11,000 layoffs in November. At the time, Zuckerberg acknowledged Meta has overinvested in its workforce after the COVID-19 pandemic caused people to interact more virtually.
“Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I did, too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.” Born in White Plains, Westchester County, Zuckerberg co-founded his technology company as TheFacebook Inc. in 2004. The company rebranded as Facebook Inc. in 2005 and as Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021.
Zuckerberg is also the Meta chairman. His net worth of $67.9 billion makes him the 15th-richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
Meta’s cuts align with an industrywide trend that’s also seen the Twitter staff reduced by thousands under billionaire Elon Musk, who acquired the social media platform in October.