meta Bloomberg News says it plans another layoff that could affect thousands of workers report Published Monday night.
The job cuts began this week and could represent additional layoffs on top of the 13% of Meta workers laid off as part of a major cost-cutting plan announced in November.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment to CNBC for this report.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously suggested that the social networking giant will focus on efforts aimed at lowering the company’s costs, calling 2023 the “Year of Efficiency.” He told analysts in February that Meta is focused on “reducing projects that aren’t running or may no longer be important,” and that “to make decisions more quickly.” He said he plans to “remove layers of middle management in the future.”
Cost-cutting efforts come at a difficult time for consumer technology companies, with fourth-quarter costs and expenses up 22% year-over-year to $25.8 billion and overall revenue down 4% to $32 billion.
A tough digital advertising market, the lingering impact of Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update, and increasing competition from ByteDance-owned TikTok continue to pose hurdles to Meta’s core online advertising business. increase.
Meanwhile, the company continues to invest heavily in developing the Metaverse, which it believes will become the next frontier in mainstream computing. The company’s Reality Labs division is tasked with building the virtual and augmented reality tech needed for the Metaverse, and in the fourth quarter he made $727 million in revenue, while he lost $4.28 billion. It also recorded a dollar operating loss.
Mr. Zuckerberg said he would be “accountable” for the company’s previously announced cost-cutting plans and said he considered layoffs a “last resort.”
“We’re reorganizing our team for efficiency,” Zuckerberg said last fall when Meta announced the layoffs. We have also made the difficult decision to let go of our employees because we cannot deliver.”
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