Meta is preparing a fresh round of job cuts, according to a report from the Financial Times. Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that there has been a lack of clarity around budgets and the future headcount at the company. The job cuts are expected to take place around March, but it’s unknown how people could be affected.
The lack of clarity has resulted in staff noting that not much work is getting done, as managers have been unable to plan ahead, the report says. Certain budgets that would normally be finalized by the end of the year still haven’t been finalized, and decisions that would usually take days to be signed off on are now taking a month in some cases.
Meta did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The report comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month during an earnings call with analysts that the company plans to continue to contain costs. He promised a “year of efficiency” and said that Meta would be more proactive about cutting low-priority and low-performance roles. Zuckerberg noted that Meta would be flattening its organization structure and “removing some layers in middle management to make decisions faster.”
In November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its global workforce. The cuts were the largest in Meta’s history and impacted multiple departments within the company, with recruiting and business teams affected the most. At the time, the company said its hiring freeze would extend into early 2023, with only a “small number of exceptions.”
Although Meta clearly isn’t the only company to announce layoffs in the past year, it’s one of the few to expand on its previous layoffs. For instance, Amazon originally said that it would lay off 10,000 employees, but later expanded that figure to 18,000. In addition, Coinbase recently laid off 950 employees, after already letting go of 1,100 employees last June.
The news comes as Meta announced today that its chief business officer, Marne Levine, is stepping down after 13 years at the company. During her time at Meta, Levine served as the first chief operating officer at Instagram and was also the vice president of global public policy at Facebook. Meta said that moving forward, Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky will take on expanded roles as senior sales and partnership leaders and will report to COO Javier Olivan.
