Zuckerberg says new layoffs are part of ‘year of efficiency’

Mark Zuckerberg gave an update on Meta on his Facebook page, calling the coming year a “year of efficiency” after the company laid off about 21,000 employees in the past six months.

“Meta is building the future of human connection, and today I want to share some news from our Year of Efficiency that will help us in that,” he wrote.

“Here’s the timeline to anticipate: Within the next few months [organization] Executives will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our business [organizations], canceling lower-priority projects and reducing our hiring rates,” he said in the Post. “With fewer new hires, I have made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruitment team. We will let the recruiting team members know tomorrow if they are impacted.”

Zuckerberg said the organization will lift hiring and transfer freezes after “restructuring” various areas of the company.

In his article, Zuckerberg said that “Flatter is quicker” and that Meta “will flatter our organization by removing multiple layers of management.”

Tuesday’s layoffs focused on executives, with Zuckerberg estimating it would affect about 10,000 jobs and 5,000 current vacancies.

“When I spoke about efficiency this year, I said that part of our work will involve downsizing – and that will serve both to build a leaner, more technical company and to improve our business performance to meet our long-term conceptual vision.” , he said.

Tuesday’s layoffs affected around 13 percent of the company’s workforce, a similar percentage to November 2022, when the social media giant laid off 11,000 employees.

Zuckerberg said he was impressed by how much faster Meta worked after the first round of layoffs.

“Since we reduced our workforce last year, a surprising result is that a lot has happened faster,” wrote the CEO.

Zuckerberg said the layoffs were all to create a “leaner” organization and “faster execution of its highest priorities.”

However, he also said the layoffs meant more people wanted to work for Meta.

“People will be more productive and their work will be more fun and fulfilling. We’re going to be an even bigger magnet for the most talented people. Therefore, in our year of efficiency, we are focusing on eliminating duplicate or less prioritized projects and making each organization as lean as possible.”

In the latest round of layoffs in November, which affected the business and recruiting teams at Meta, Zuckerberg paid laid-off employees for 16 weeks, adding two weeks of additional pay for each unapproved year of service at the company, at a cap.

The company also covered medical insurance for laid-off employees for six months. It’s unclear if Meta will do so for the current round of layoffs.

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