Meta plans to announce additional staff cuts in several stages over the coming months, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal.
According to the paper, the scale of the new cuts could match last year’s. In November 2022 the company announced layoffs of 11,000 people (13% of its staff) as part of its restructuring.
The first wave of new cuts will be announced next week, according to a WSJ source. As a result, Meta may shut down some teams and projects, including those related to the metaverse-focused Reality Labs division.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility for the previous round of layoffs. In February, during an earnings call with investors for the fourth quarter, he called 2023 “the year of efficiency,” according to The Verge.
According to a memo from Mark Zuckerberg, cited by Variety, the cuts involve 10,000 jobs (11.6% of the total workforce). The Meta CEO also said he would close 5,000 additional vacancies and impose a hiring moratorium.
The new round of layoffs at Meta will reduce the company’s total expenses for 2023 from $89-95 billion to $86-92 billion, according to a filing with the SEC. Restructuring costs will amount to up to $5 billion.
As a reminder, since the start of the year Microsoft laid off about 10,000 people. The payments company PayPal laid off 2,000 employees or about 7% of its workforce.
According to a CoinGecko report, in January 2,806 people lost their jobs in the digital currencies sector. 84% of the layoffs were at crypto exchanges.
Earlier reports noted that Coinbase, ConsenSys, Genesis Trading, Blockchain.com, Gemini, Luno, Matrixport, Chainalysis, Bittrex, Messari and other crypto companies.