Meta’s planning for a smaller workforce??

Thousands of employees may be impacted by Meta’s upcoming round of layoffs, according to a Monday night Bloomberg News article.

The job losses, which might begin this week, would add to the 13% of Meta employees who had already lost their jobs as a result of a significant cost-cutting initiative launched in November.

The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, had stated that this year would be focused on initiatives aimed at reducing the company’s expenditures, promoting 2023 as the “Year of Efficiency.” In February, he informed analysts that Meta would be concentrating on “reducing initiatives that aren’t performing or might not be necessary” and that it intended to “remove layers of middle management to make choices faster.”

The consumer technology company’s cost-cutting initiatives come at a difficult time, as it reported that during the fourth quarter, costs and expenses increased 22% year over year to $25.8 billion, while overall sales decreased 4% to $32 billion.

Due to challenges in the digital advertising industry, the lasting repercussions of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, and rising competition from ByteDance-owned TikTok, Meta’s main online advertising business continues to face obstacles.

The corporation is still making significant investments in the metaverse’s development, which Meta believes might be the emerging field of mainstream computing. A $4.28 billion operating loss was incurred during the fourth quarter by the company’s Reality Labs division, which is in charge of developing the virtual reality and augmented reality systems required for the metaverse.

While stating that he regards layoffs “as a last resort,” Zuckerberg has stated that he will “take ownership” for the company’s previously disclosed cost-cutting efforts.

Zuckerberg stated last fall when Meta announced layoffs, “We’re restructuring teams to boost our efficiency. Yet these steps won’t be enough to bring our spending into line with our income growth, so I’ve also had to make the difficult choice to let employees go.