Mark Zuckerberg-Led Meta Slashes Business Teams in Final Round of Layoffs

Meta Platforms Inc, proprietor of Facebook, slashed jobs throughout its enterprise and operations models on Wednesday because it carried out its final batch of a three-part spherical of layoffs, a part of a plan introduced in March to eradicate 10,000 roles.

Dozens of workers working in groups equivalent to advertising and marketing, website safety, enterprise engineering, program administration, content material technique and company communications took to LinkedIn to announce that they have been laid off.

The social media big additionally reduce workers from its models targeted on privateness and integrity, in keeping with the LinkedIn posts.

Meta earlier this 12 months grew to become the primary Big Tech firm to announce a second spherical of mass layoffs, after displaying greater than 11,000 workers the door within the fall. The cuts introduced the corporate’s headcount right down to the place it stood as of about mid-2021, following a hiring spree that doubled its workforce since 2020.

The firm’s shares closed marginally up in a broadly weaker market. They have greater than doubled in worth this 12 months and are among the many prime performers within the S&P 500 index, because of the cost-cutting drive and Meta’s deal with synthetic intelligence.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in March mentioned the majority of the layoffs within the firm’s second spherical would happen in three “moments” over several months, largely finishing in May. Some smaller rounds could continue after that, he said.

Overall the cuts have hit non-engineering roles most heavily, reinforcing the primacy of those who write the code at Meta. Zuckerberg has pledged to restructure business teams “substantially” and return to a “extra optimum ratio of engineers to different roles.”

Even among cuts aimed specifically at technology teams, the company has eliminated non-engineering roles like content design and user experience research most severely, according to executives speaking at a company town hall after the last round of layoffs in April.

About 4,000 employees lost their jobs in April, Zuckerberg said during the town hall, following a smaller hit to recruiting teams in March.

The social media company said on Wednesday that the latest cuts were likely to impact around 490 employees at its international headquarters in Dublin, or almost 20% of its Irish workforce.

Two top executives in key market India – director of marketing Avinash Pant and Saket Jha Saurabh, director and head of media partnerships – were also let go, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The two executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meta’s layoffs followed months of waning revenue growth amid high inflation and a digital ad pullback from the pandemic e-commerce boom.

The company also has been pouring billions of dollars into its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs unit, which lost $13.7 billion in 2022, and a project to whip its infrastructure into shape to support artificial intelligence work.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – Reuters)