Meta’s business groups cut in latest round of layoffs

Facebook-parent Meta on Wednesday began cutting employees in its business groups as part of a previously announced round of layoffs, according to social media posts from impacted workers. Meta employees in operations, project management, marketing, policy, communications and risk analytics announced on LinkedIn Wednesday morning that they had been laid off. The company declined to confirm the reductions were underway, but a Meta spokesperson pointed CNN to the March blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing that the company would cut 10,000 employees this year, and that affected members of the business groups would be notified this month. Zuckerberg previously said the business groups would be the third and final major round of those layoffs. Laid off members of Meta’s technology and recruiting teams were notified in the past two months. Some smaller reductions may continue through the end of 2023, Zuckerberg said in March. The 10,000 job reductions mark the second significant wave of layoffs at Meta in recent months. The company said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in its history. In September, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filing. With the 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced in March, Meta’s headcount will fall to around 66,000 — a total reduction of about 25% — assuming no additional hiring. Meta has said the layoffs are part of its “year of efficiency,” as the company attempts to recover from repeated revenue declines, heightened competition, concerns about user growth and big losses in its Reality Labs division amid its pivot to building the so-called metaverse. Zuckerberg has also taken responsibility for over-hiring earlier in the pandemic, when there was strong demand for the company’s products and online advertising, which dropped off somewhat once the world reopened. The turnaround strategy is showing early signs of success. Meta’s stock jumped last month after the company posted a 3% year-over-year revenue increase for the first three months of 2023, reversing a trend of three consecutive quarters of revenue declines. Still, profits declined by nearly a quarter compared to the same period in the prior year, and price per advertisement — an indicator of the health of the company’s core digital ad business — also decreased by 17% from the year prior. Zuckerberg said on an earnings call with analysts last month that when Meta started its “efficiency work” late last year, “our business wasn’t performing as well as I wanted, but now we’re increasingly doing this work from a position of strength.” But left in its wake are the thousands of employees affected by layoffs. “Finding work you care about and believe in and the right people to be in the trenches with is an incredible dream; it also makes moments like this incredibly difficult,” one employee affected by Wednesday’s layoffs said in a LinkedIn post. The employee called the cuts a “shock to the system.”