Facebook owner Meta’s announcement that it would cut a further 10,000 jobs globally in the coming months probably comes as no real surprise to a lot of people.
When the company first announced it would shed 11,000 jobs last year as it struggled to cut its cloth to fit the new economic reality, the consensus was that the cuts did not go deep enough.
After betting big on both the metaverse and continued economic growth, Meta now has to readjust its expectations. And 11,000 jobs – a fraction of the pandemic-era hiring – just wasn’t going to cut it.
So now we are here again, with recruitment staff facing the chop on Wednesday, followed by cutbacks in the technology group next month and other business groups in May.
On top of that, 5,000 empty roles will now go unfilled, with Meta cutting them completely.
The news was sent to staff in an update from Mark Zuckerberg, a carefully worded message that tried to strike the right balance of being sombre yet optimistic for the future, offering a degree of transparency while not giving everything away.
How this new round of job cuts will impact Irish staff is unknown. The uncertainty hanging over employees will do little for employee morale, regardless of how many we’re-all-in-this-together updates the chief executive issues.
Further changes at the Instagram owner are afoot. The company has undertaken what it calls its Year of Efficiency that will see Meta restructured, organisations flattened and costs slashed.
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The Meta that emerges will be a very different place from the one that started the year. That in itself is not a bad thing; Meta has become a behemoth, employing more than 80,000 before it started wielding the axe late last year. Simplifying its structure should benefit it in the future.
Meanwhile, employees are being encouraged to attend the office – not that Meta is compelling them to return, but rather engaging in some gentle persuasion, citing research of its own that indicates in-person work, at least part of the time, benefits engineers in the early stages of their career, allowing them to build trust in person.
[ Fears for Irish jobs as Meta plans to cut 10,000 workers globallyOpens in new window ]
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The death of the office and the full-scale embrace of remote work seems a bit less likely.
Zuckerberg’s update also contained a warning: the current economic situation is likely to last the year, and tech companies are preparing accordingly. Could that mean further job losses down the track? As the past few months have proven, anything is possible.
