Facebook parent Meta is slashing 10,000 jobs, about as many as the social media company announced late last year in its first round of cuts, as uncertainly about the global economy hits the technology sector particularly hard.
The company announced 11,000 job cuts in November, about 13% of its workforce at the time. In addition to the layoffs, Meta said Tuesday that it would not fill 5,000 open positions.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta and other tech companies have been hiring aggressively for at least two years and in recent months have begun to let some of those workers go. Hiring in the U.S. is still strong, but layoffs have hit hard in some sectors.
Early last month, Meta posted falling profits and its third consecutive quarter of declining revenue. On the same day, the company said that it would buy back as much as $40 billion of its own stock.
The company said Tuesday it will reduce the size of its recruiting team and make further cuts in its tech groups in late April, and then its business groups in late May.
Zuckerberg has invested tens of billions of dollars building out its metaverse, its virutal reality concept, and renamed the company Meta, signaling a new focus for Facebook.
“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs -- and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision,” said Zuckerberg.
The biggest tech companies in the U.S. are cutting costs elsewhere, too.
This month, Amazon paused construction on its second headquarters in Virginia following the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s history and its shifting plans around remote work.
Global inflation has remained stubborn and its made for more difficult decisions for both households and businesses in the U.S.
Fast growth companies, including many in the technology sector, are hunkering down for what may be an extended period of adverse economic conditions.
“At this point, I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” Zuckerberg said in a message to employees.
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6 Comments
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Yrral
The economy has nothing to do with Facebook,he just wants to lay people off ,lots of Indian with work visas will have to leave the US , because they are only allowed to work as IT workers Google Indian Visa IT Workers
Sven Asai
And all their sophisticated AI systems could not see that economic development and make some predictions near such an outcome? That tells you the next and even bigger story, stay tuned.
Seigi
Death of Facebook and Instagram! TikTok rules the world! China rules the world!
Hakman
Guess they'll have to find some other job where they can sip espresso and play foozball after chilling out in the mediation room.
Blacklabel
liberals lost their minds when Musk did this.
Facebook? crickets.
Bofington
The left media only ever harasses Musk. If he does something amazing, or good, it's page 13. If he makes a small slip-up, it's headline. Liberals in the pockets of other auto companies. Need to bring his image down. In my opinion he's a very smart business man who doesn't take crap, and puts out the good products he promises... but late.