Meta Gearing Up For Fresh Layoffs Around March, Months After Firing 11,000 Employees

Months after laying off 11,000 employees, Meta is gearing up for a fresh round of job cuts.

The fresh layoffs at Meta are expected to take place around March.

Months after laying off 11,000 employees, Meta is gearing up for a fresh round of job cuts, according to a report by the Financial Times. The report cited two people familiar with the matter saying that there has been a lack of clarity around budgets and the future headcount at the social networking giant and Facebook parent.

The fresh layoffs at Meta are expected to take place around March, but it is not known how people could be affected.

This development comes soon after company CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an earnings call with analysts said earlier this month that the company plans to continue to cut costs. Zuckerberg promised a “year of efficiency” and said that the company would be more proactive about terminating low-priority and low-performance roles. 

The company was said to be would be "flattening its organisation structure" and “removing some layers in middle management to make decisions faster.”

In one of the worst lay-offs ever in the tech industry, Zuckerberg in November sacked more than 11,000 employees -- about 13 per cent of the global workforce -- and extended the hiring freeze through Q1, 2023. The Facebook and Instagram parent reported over 87,000 employees (as of September 2022).

In a recent statement during an earnings call, Zuckerberg said the company is going to take a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through Q1. He blamed the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition and ads signal loss for the move, saying it caused "revenue to be much lower than I'd expected".

"At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments," said Zuckerberg.