Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks in New York City in 2019. He called 2023 the "year of efficiency."
Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesAfter Meta laid off 11,000 workers last November, signs this month are hinting at another mass job cut at the Bay Area tech giant.
The Menlo Park-based megacorporation, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta Quest (formerly Oculus), has delayed finalizing multiple teams’ budgets while it prepares for a fresh batch of job cuts, according to a Saturday report by the Financial Times.
Managers haven’t been able to plan for upcoming workloads, projects are taking weeks longer to sign off, and staff members are complaining about getting “zero work” done, the report said. Meta did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment.
The November job cut hit 13% of Meta's workforce, but it’s unclear how broad an upcoming layoff round would be. The Financial Times report said the company is going through performance reviews ahead of potential March cuts. And according to a Bloomberg report published last week, Meta has already asked managers to move down into individual contributor roles or leave the company as part of a “flattening” at the firm.
A sign is posted in front of Meta headquarters on April 28, 2022, in Menlo Park, Calif. Meta recently scrapped a large portion of its office space in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images“We're working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call on Feb. 1. “... We’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren't performing or may no longer be as crucial, but my main focus is on increasing the efficiency of how we execute our top priorities.”
The billionaire executive dubbed 2023 the “year of efficiency” at his firm after spending much of last year under scrutiny for its ambitious investments in augmented and virtual reality. Meta, which mints money on its Instagram and Facebook ad marketplaces, has struggled under Apple’s new privacy protection policies and shaky digital ad demand.
But for employees on teams with unfinalized budgets or projects waiting to be greenlighted, 2023 has gotten off to a rough start.
“The year of efficiency is kicking off with a bunch of people getting paid to do nothing,” one anonymous employee told the Financial Times.
Hear of anything going on at Meta or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.