Social media giant Meta is preparing for a fresh round of mass layoffs as founder Mark Zuckerberg continues to cut costs to bring in his supposed ‘year of efficiency’. The Facebook-parent had previously shed around 13 per cent of its workforce when it laid off 11,000 employees in November 2022, joining other tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet in announcing mass layoffs.
As the upcoming layoff plans are yet to be officially announced, Meta has also delayed finalising the budgets for various teams, as per a Financial Times report. The lack of clarity about the upcoming layoffs is also preventing managers from planning their workloads and consequently resulting in “zero work” getting done, Meta employees cited in the report said.
They added that the uncertainty about layoffs has resulted in projects that usually take only a few days to finish, running into weeks and months until they are signed off.
Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 the ‘year of efficiency’ where his social media behemoth will limit its annual expenses between $89 billion and $95 billion. As a result of the cost cutting measures, Meta has seen an improving outlook at its fourth quarter results. This has also caused an 18 per cent hike in its shares, resulting in an $88 billion to its market capitalisation.
Meta’s ambitious Metaverse plans were eating into its revenue earlier, which, coupled with the global economic downturn, necessitated a mass layoff in November 2022.
