Meta is laying off a number of its technical employees, the second in the latest round of job cuts that CEO Mark Zuckerburg first announced back in March.
Employees holding technical roles like user experience, software engineering, and graphics programming were notified of their termination on Wednesday, CNBC reported, and mutliple technology staffers have taken to social media to say they’ve been laid off. Gameplay programmers were also affected by the layoffs, CNBC said.
Earlier this week, Vox reported that about 4,000 employees would be cut in this round of layoffs.[ Lessons on diversity in IT: How to hire and retain Black tech professionals — for real • 10 professional organizations focused on diversity in tech • Gender gapped: The state of gender diversity in IT • Māori participation in IT: diversity insights for CIOs everywhere ]
The company has previously said the timeline for the cuts may differ for employees based outside of the US.
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In addition to the current round of layoffs, Meta subsidiary Instagram is also said to be downsizing or relocating UK-based staff, with the app’s head, Adam Mosseri, moving back to the US, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The layoffs currently taking place represent the second wave of job cuts that were first announced last month and will ultimately see around 10,000 people laid off from the company. This week’s cuts follow on from those that were first made to recruitment teams on March 15, with another round of layoffs affecting business and administration teams is expected next month.
This news comes a year and a half after former UK politician and current VP of global affairs at Meta, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blog post that the company was planning to create “10,000 new jobs at Facebook across the EU” over the next five years. He further described the move as a “a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent.”[ REGISTER NOW for May 11, in-person event, FutureIT Washington, D.C.: Building the Digital Business with Cloud, AI and Security ]
Meta, however, is not the only company to have downsized significantly over the last 12 months, with other large tech companies such as Twitter, Salesforce, Amazon, and Google all letting go of thousands of employees after a combination of over hiring during the pandemic and a prolonged economic downturn forced many to readdress their budgets. So far, there have been more tech company layoffs so far in 2023 than during all of last year.