Meta Reportedly Mulls Another Round Of Layoffs That Could Affect Thousands More

Facebook’s parent company Meta is reportedly planning a new round of staff cuts that could affect thousands of more employees just months after the company laid off over 11,000 workers late last year.

The social media giant is now planning to push some lead roles into lower-level positions to flatten management between executives and interns, a person with knowledge of the matter told the Washington Post. The move is expected to affect thousands of jobs, unidentified sources told the outlet.

Aside from the possible elimination of thousands more jobs, Meta is also reportedly looking to shelve some projects – a move expected to “disproportionately affect workers in non-engineering roles.”

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta rated the performance of over 7,000 employees as “subpar,” increasing fears that it may pave the way for another round of layoffs. A source also told the outlet that low-performance ratings may lead to more employees being asked to leave.

Earlier, after cutting 13% of the company’s total workforce in November, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said he did not anticipate any more layoffs. However, during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report released earlier this month, Zuckerberg alluded to more layoffs as he said the company’s management theme for 2023 was the “year of efficiency.”

“We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and when we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end,” Zuckerberg reiterated at the time.

Bloomberg previously reported that Meta has been going through a process called “flattening,” wherein the company asks managers and directors to either leave their jobs or transition to lower, individual contributor jobs.

Before the November 2022 layoffs, Meta reported that it had 87,000 employees as of September. Zuckerberg said in the layoff announcement that “most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year.”

After the mass layoffs, some Meta employees under the Sourcer Development Program said they were told they would only receive eight weeks of base pay as part of the severance package instead of the promised 16 weeks.

A former software engineer who was among those affected by the mass layoffs also revealed how rumors about job cuts circulated among Meta workers for months, and while they knew the layoff was happening, they didn’t know when it would happen until the official announcement came.