Facebook owner Meta began laying off the final batch of employees on Wednesday as part of a three-part round of job cuts announced in March to eliminate 10,000 job roles.
Meta began laying off the final batch
After laying off over 11,000 employees last year, Meta became the first tech behemoth to lay off employees earlier this year.
Following the California-based company’s rapid hiring since 2020, the total number of employees is not on par with those in mid-2021.
A number of employees working in marketing, recruiting, engineering, and corporate communications announced their layoffs on LinkedIn on Wednesday.
Meta’s stock rose 0.5% in a generally weaker market. Because of the cost-cutting drive and Meta’s focus on artificial intelligence (AI), they have more than doubled in value this year and are among the top performers in the S&P 500 index.
In March, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the “bulk of the layoffs in the company’s second round would take place in three moments over several months, largely finishing in May. Some smaller rounds could continue after that.”
The layoffs primarily impacted non-engineering employees, reinforcing the control and advantage held by those who write code at the tech behemoth.
In March, Zuckerberg promised to “substantially” restructure business teams and return to a “more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.”
According to executives speaking at a company town hall following the cuts, the company eliminated non-engineering roles like content design and user experience research the most severely.
CEO said during the town hall: “About 4,000 employees lost their jobs in the April layoffs,” following a smaller hit to recruiting teams in March.
The social media company announced on Wednesday that the latest layoffs would affect approximately 490 employees at its international headquarters in Dublin, or nearly 20% of its Irish workforce.
The layoffs at Meta came after months of slowing revenue growth due to high inflation and a digital ad pullback from the pandemic e-commerce boom.
The company has also been investing billions of dollars in its metaverse-focused Reality Labs unit, which lost $13.7 billion in 2022, as well as a project to revamp its infrastructure to support AI work.
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