Meta Cutting Another 10,000 Jobs And Instituting Hiring Freeze

Meta Platforms, the corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, will cut another 10,000 jobs and undergo a hiring freeze in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg is calling the “Year of Efficiency” for the tech giant.

Along with the layoffs, Meta will also close 5,000 open roles. In a blog post, Zuckerberg said the measures are being taken to “improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more.”

Late last year, Meta announced it was axing 11,000 staff – about 13% of the entire workforce at that point – and the new round of cuts take that to 21,000, or 26,000 if the hiring freeze is counted. In an SEC filing in January, the company said it had 86,482 employees as of the end of 2022, a tally that was up 20% over the end of 2021 but a number that also included most of the 11,000 workers targeted for layoffs. Meta said it would provide an updated head count as of the end of the first quarter when it reports results this spring. The January filing also noted that the layoffs last November contributed to 2022 restructuring charges of $4.61 billion.