Meta announced another 10,000 job loses, as they slash costs, cutting non-essential job roles

As his pledge to plow on with his 'year of efficiency', Mark Zuckerberg has announced further cuts to the workforce at Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram parent company. 11,000 staff were fired at Meta in November, in what rumoured to be just the first of a series of layoffs and now a further 10,000 jobs have gone at Meta's in second wave of redundances.

Having already laid off 11,000 staff (13% of workforce) back in November, news of the additional 10,000 comes as not too much of a surprise, as Zuckerberg acts on his pledge of slashing non-essential staff numbers in order to reign in costs. It comes on the back of news that Meta's revenue growth has faltered, which Zuckerberg described as a "humbling wake-up call" and told staff at Meta that "we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for years".

"Higher interest rates leads to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation," he wrote. "Given this outlook, we'll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success."

These cuts in staffing levels will save Meta $3 billion. During the pandemic Meta increased staff numbers from 48,000 in March 2020 to 87,000 at the start of the redundancy announcement in November. Zuckerberg had already declared 2023 the "year of efficiency" on top of his pledge to spend billions building his metaverse.

Job cuts have been at managerial level, reducing the layers of management. He told staff, "I don't think you want a management structure that's just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work."

Zuckerberg stated in his memo relating to the second round of job cuts, that having so many layers of managers no longer makes sense and that many of the current managers will be re-assigned other roles within the company as individual contributors. "A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster." he wrote in the memo. "People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling".

As well as cutting staffing numbers, Meta will also cancel or postpone low-priority projects. Meta would cease work on sharing NTFs on Facebook and Instagram and any new work creating social media apps. Many of Meta's staff still WFH and Zuckerberg hinted that he wants more of his junior engineers to work in the office three days a week, as this in turn would build more trust in people and lead to staff working more effectively.