Meta to lay off 10,000 employees in second round of job cuts, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees

Facebook-parent company Meta announced on Tuesday it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees, making the social giant the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs.

In a message to staff., Meta CEO said: “We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”

The announcement comes just two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms was planning a fresh round of layoffs that could affect thousands of workers just a few weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised no more layoffs.

Meanwhile, according to the layoffs tracking site layoffs.fyi, the tech sector has laid off 128,202 tech workers since the start of 2022.

The latest layoff further underscores Zuckerberg’s push to turn 2023 into the “Year of Efficiency” with promised cost cuts of $5 billion in expenses to between $89 billion and $95 billion. He has said that he would “take accountability” for the company’s previously announced cost-cutting plans, saying that he views layoffs “as a last resort.”

“We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency,” Zuckerberg said last fall when Meta announced layoffs. “But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go.”

On November 9, Facebook’s Meta laid off 13% of its total workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, as it struggled with soaring costs and a weak advertising market. The company also lost $700 billion of its value over a risky metaverse bet.

Meta said the affected employees will receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, Zuckerberg said. Meta will cover health insurance for six months. Zuckerberg also said the company spent around $3.7 billion in 2022 in paying out severance as well as terminating office leases.

“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 said. adding that further layers of middle management could still be trimmed.

In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced he was changing the name of the company he founded about two decades ago from Facebook to Meta to reflect its focus on the metaverse. During the speech, Zuckerberg described the metaverse as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”

Since the rebrand, Meta has lost more than 70% of its value since peaking last year as all its business units continue to get pummeled on multiple fronts. The social giant has lost 70% of its value YTD as its stock falls from $300 to just $100.

But Meta believes the metaverse is a game-changing technology and believes the early mover advantage will potentially make Meta the first multi-trillion dollar company. While its stocks cratered,  Zuckerberg doubled down on losing even more money building the metaverse.

Meta also said it plans to invest $10 billion in the metaverse to reflect the company’s new vision. At the time, Meta said it plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build a “metaverse.” Zuckerberg added that the metaverse is a major investment for the company and plays a vital role in the company going forward.