Meta is preparing another round of job cuts, according to a Financial Times report. Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times there was a lack of clarity around the company’s budgets and future workforce. The job cuts are expected to take place around March, but it’s unclear how people might be affected.
The lack of clarity has led staff to notice that little work is being done as managers have been unable to plan ahead, the report said. Some budgets that would normally be finalized by the end of the year have still not been, and decisions that would usually take days to approve 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 on an earnings call with analysts that the company plans to continue containing costs. He promised a “year of efficiency” and said Meta would be more proactive in removing low-priority, low-performing roles. Zuckerberg noted that Meta would flatten its organizational structure and “remove some layers of middle management to make decisions faster.”
In November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, about 13% of its global workforce. The cuts were the largest in Meta’s history and impacted multiple departments across the company, with recruiting and sales teams being the hardest hit. At the time, the company said its hiring freeze would continue through early 2023, with only a “small number of exceptions”.
While Meta is clearly not the only company to announce layoffs in the past year, it is one of the few to extend its previous layoffs. For example, Amazon initially announced that it would be laying off 10,000 employees, but later increased that figure to 18,000. Additionally, Coinbase recently laid off 950 employees, having already laid off 1,100 employees last June.
The news comes as Meta today announced that its chief commercial officer, Marne Levine, is stepping down after 13 years with the company. While at Meta, Levine served as Instagram’s first chief operating officer and also served as vice president of global public policy at Facebook. Meta said that going forward, Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky will take on expanded roles as senior sales and partnership managers, reporting to COO Javier Olivan.
