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Facebook parent Meta to retrench 10 000 more employees

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 14 Mar 2023

Facebook’s parent company Meta has announced a second round of job cuts, looking to reduce its workforce by 10 000.

In a memo to employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says over the next couple of months, the social media company will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening the organisation, cancelling lower priority projects and reducing the firm’s hiring rates.

“With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team,” says Zuckerberg.

“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. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details.

“Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10 000 people and to close around 5 000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”

The latest job cuts at Meta come after the company in November announced it was laying off 11 000 employees, about 13% of its workforce, as the company faces declining revenues.

Of late, global tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, Amazon, Dell and SAP have made moves to cull their workforces.

The companies cited the uncertain economy as the reason for the layoffs, saying they are prioritising the long-term health of their businesses.

Locally, companies such as Telkom, Naspers, Mara Phones and crypto platform Luno have announced layoffs.

Adds Zuckerberg: “This will be tough and there's no way around that. 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.

“After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group. Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model. We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.”

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