Meta Platforms on Wednesday carried out another round of job cuts, this time hitting engineers and adjacent tech teams, as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg further moved to streamline the business in a bid to make 2023 a "year of efficiency."
Meta in March became the first Big Tech company to announce
a second round of mass layoffs, which it said would take place in three main
batches over several months and impact 10,000 employees.
Wednesday's cuts, though expected, prompted expressions of
frustration from Meta employees. Layoffs were the subject of the most popular
questions posted on an internal company forum on Wednesday ahead of an upcoming
employee town hall.
"You've shattered the morale and confidence in
leadership of many high performers who work with intensity. Why should we stay
at Meta?" read one question seen by Reuters.
The question references comments Zuckerberg made last year
urging employees to work with more "intensity" to meet the Facebook
and Instagram parent company's business challenges.
The company declined a Reuters request for comment.
Meta's first round of layoffs in the fall hit more than
11,000 employees, or 13 percent of its workforce at the time, and preceded
other major tech companies shedding thousands of employees after a pandemic-led
boom in digital advertising and cloud computing.
With the restructuring, Meta is also shelving lower-priority
projects and "flattening" layers of middle management.
Investors have rewarded the company for downsizing.
Meta shares have surged about 80 percent this year,
outperforming the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite's 16 percent rise in the period.
The company, which will announce its first-quarter results
on April 26, is expected to benefit from a modest pickup in the digital
advertising market and regulatory pressure on chief rival TikTok. © Reuters