(SAN FRANCISCO) — Facebook-parent Meta began laying off workers on Wednesday as part of its latest round of job cuts announced in March, the company confirmed to ABC News.
Last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg released plans for 10,000 job cuts over April and May, as part of what Zuckerberg described as the company’s “Year of Efficiency.”
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” Zuckerberg said in March, forecasting job cuts for technical workers in April and enterprise employees in May.
“My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead,” Zuckerberg added.
The personnel changes at Meta include the closure of 5,000 additional open roles that the company hadn’t hired, Zuckerberg said.
Meta has faced challenges in recent months as the company contends with a widespread drop in online ad spending and rising competition from TikTok.
The company’s shares fell 64% last year but have recovered a significant portion of those losses this year amid cost-cutting measures.
Sales at top tech firms, including Facebook, have retreated from the blistering pace attained during the pandemic, when billions across the world were forced into isolation.
Customers stuck at home came to rely on delivery services like e-commerce and virtual connections formed through social media
In turn, companies across the tech industry have announced layoffs this year affecting tens of thousands of workers.
In early January, Amazon announced plans to eliminate just over 18,000 roles, including layoffs that had been announced in November.
Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, said in January that it would cut roughly 12,000 jobs from its global workforce.
Meta drew criticism last year from some investors over its large investment in its metaverse project, which has yet to deliver significant returns.
Brad Gerstner, whose fund Altimeter Capital holds hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Meta stock, sharply criticized the company’s strategy in an open letter in October.
“Meta has drifted into the land of excess – too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency,” Gerstner wrote.
Meta’s most recent quarterly earnings report, reflecting a three-month period ending in December, recorded a third-consecutive quarter of falling revenue but exceeded analyst expectations.
The company reported 2 billion daily active users — a figure that also surpassed expectations.
“There’s going to be some more we can do to improve our productivity, speed and cost structure,” Zuckerberg said on the earnings call in February.
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