Meta will eliminate 10,000 more workers and “low priority initiatives.”

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta, confirmed recent reports that another round of layoffs was looming by announcing plans to trim its employment by another 10,000 individuals and remove roughly 5,000 open positions that it had not yet filled.

Also, according to Zuckerberg, the business would halt “lower priority projects” since he “underestimated the indirect costs” related to these activities.

As the social networking juggernaut moves forward with what it’s dubbing a “year of efficiency,” the announcement comes just four months after Meta announced that it was reducing roughly 11,000 roles. In total, this implies that since the end of last year, Meta has effectively laid off — or plans to lay off — about one-quarter of its workers.

The parent company of Facebook stated that it anticipates the most recent reorganization initiatives to begin in its tech divisions in April, followed by its business units in May.

In a note to staff that was later made public, Zuckerberg stated that, in some instances, it might take until the end of the year to complete these adjustments. “Our timetables for international teams will also differ, and local leaders will provide further information in the coming days. There is no avoiding the difficulty of this.

In a different SEC filing, Meta stated that it now anticipates its 2023 full-year expenses to be in the $86 billion to $92 billion range, down from an earlier estimate that reached as high as $95 billion. These expenses, which include severance payments, are mostly attributable to “cost-reduction initiatives” connected with the restructuring.

Zuckerberg said that the business will lift its employment freeze across all of its groups once the most recent restructuring initiatives are over.

Flattening
Even though Zuckerberg didn’t say much about the roles or “lower priority initiatives” that will be cut, he did say that the many departments and organizations that make up Meta Platforms Inc. will be “flattened,” which means that some of the management layers will be removed.

Zuckerberg says that every level of a hierarchy slows down the flow of information and makes people less willing to take risks.Before transferring work higher up the chain, every manager normally analyzes it and smooths out any rough edges. During our Year of Efficiency, we will cut down on the number of levels of management in our organization.We will ask several managers to participate in this as individual contributors. Also, we’ll have individual contributors report to practically all levels, not just the bottom, allowing for faster information flow between workers and management.

Zuckerberg was eager to emphasize that Facebook was developing for the long term, with a sustained focus on AI and the metaverse, similar to the rhetoric behind its previously announced wave of layoffs in November. There is little evidence to suggest that Zuckerberg’s unwavering belief in the metaverse will change any time soon, even though many people have largely viewed its pivot to the metaverse back in 2021 as a major mistake that is nowhere near ready to generate the kinds of rewards its shareholders might like.

Zuckerberg said that “our single largest investment” goes toward building AI and putting it into all of our products. “I believe the experiences it enables will be incredible. We have the infrastructure to execute this at a scale that has never been achieved. Our innovative work developing the metaverse and the upcoming generation of computer platforms will influence the future of social connection.