Meta Lays Off Technical Staffers, In Another Workforce Blow

Tom Jowitt,
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Image credit: Meta

Second tranche of layoffs begin at Meta Platforms, as engineers and other technical staff are made redundant

Meta Platforms has confirmed it has begun laying off technical staff, in a second round of brutal job cuts at the Facebook parent.

CNBC reported that Meta on Wednesday started laying off employees in technical roles. Staff with technical backgrounds such as user experience, software engineering, graphics programming and other roles announced on LinkedIn that they had been let go.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the cuts had begun.

The Meta Store in Burlingame. Image credit: Meta
The Meta Store in Burlingame. Image credit: Meta

Job cuts

Last month CEO Mark Zuckerberg had informed staff that he had made the “difficult decision” to axe another 10,000 positions.

These latest jobs cuts (which had been expected to begin in May) are the start of these 10,000 job losses.

It should be remembered that these 10,000 job losses are in addition to Meta cutting about 13 percent of its employees, or roughly 11,000 jobs, that had been announced last November.

Since that time, multiple reports had warned that further job losses, equally as severe, were on the way.

And on Wednesday Meta has begun its second round of job losses.

One staffer impacted by the moves told CNBC that Wednesday’s layoffs also hit product-facing teams and that Meta plans to cut business-facing roles, such as finance, legal and HR, beginning in May.

The unidentified employee said Meta suggested tech teams who weren’t impacted by Wednesday’s cuts may also be included in layoffs next month.

LinkedIn posts indicated that multiple people who worked as gameplay programmers were also affected by the layoffs. CNBC reported that Gameplay engineers work on virtual and augmented reality products.

“I woke up this morning to the unfortunate news that I was one of the many laid-off from Meta today,” a former Facebook business program manager wrote on Linkedin.

Ad slump

This second round of job cuts is part of Meta’s efficiency drive after a tough 2022, where it contended with a post-pandemic slump in digital ads, coupled with heavy spending on the Metaverse that unsettled some investors.

Zuckerberg recognised this investor concern in February after Meta posted a notable decline in profits, coupled with a third straight quarter revenue decline, which led him to promise investors that 2023 would be a “year of efficiency”.

Meta is expected to posts its first quarter financial results next week.