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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg refers to 2023 as the "year of efficiency," and part of that means more layoffs. The first wave of cuts is expected to be announced next week, with non-engineering roles being hit hard. The company is expected to shut down projects and teams in conjunction with these job cuts. Facebook's parent company is expected to do multiple layoff rounds over the coming months, resulting in another 13% cut of its workforce.
Last year, Meta cut approximately 11,000 jobs or around 13% of its employees. Among the projects expected to get axed include wearable devices in the works at its Reality Labs (Meta's hardware and metaverse division).
"We’re continuing to look across the company, across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, and really evaluate are we deploying our resources toward the highest leverage opportunities," Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said Thursday at the Morgan Stanley 2023 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. "This is going to result in us making some tough decisions to wind down projects in some places, to shift resources away from some teams."
The ongoing layoffs have garnered attention given Zuckerberg's prediction in October that Meta would end 2023 with roughly as many employees as it had at that time. However, the following month, it laid off 13% of its staff. And then, Meta encouraged further attrition through a performance review process.