Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is going through another round of mass layoffs, having only just gotten over the wave of 11,000 jobs cut from the company late last year.
This time, Facebook has culled 10,000 from its staff without comment, merely pointing publications like the BBC to their memo released in March in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined plans for the company, including staff cuts.
The memo says: “Meta is building the future of human connection, and today I want to share some updates on our Year of Efficiency that will help us do that. The goals of this work are: (1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision.”
At the time, Zuckerberg said: “I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.”
It’s the latest in a long line of staff cuts in the tech industry that, according to the website layoffs.fyi, has affected 170,000 jobs and includes tech giant names like Amazon and Google.
For Facebook, specifically, there are theories that the social media bubble that all platforms saw during the pandemic burst, yes, but Zuckerberg has also taken a step back from his Metaverse efforts, saying that the “tech just isn’t there”.
