Meta’s parent Facebook staged its biggest layoff last November, laying off around 11,000 employees. But more jobs, it appears, will be cut.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a Facebook post on February 1, “We closed last year with some tough layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I made it clear that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end. During the earnings call on the same day, he announced that 2023 would be Meta’s “year of efficiency.”
When Meta workers want to know who will be considered inefficient, the company has delayed finalizing the budget of several teams, according to it Financial Times. Employees who spoke to the British newspaper on condition of anonymity said morale at the company was low and little work was being done in some teams while they awaited the unusual budget decision.
Meta declined to comment when contacted by fortune.
“Honestly, it’s still a mess,” one employee told the FT. “The year of efficiency begins with many people being paid to do nothing.”
Another worker told the paper that further job cuts are expected next month.
Middle managers have reason to be nervous.
‘More proactive about cutting jobs’
Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post, “We are working on our organizational structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as using AI tools to help engineers be more productive. As part of this, we will be more proactive about cutting jobs that are not implemented or may no longer be important, but my main focus is to increase efficiency in implementing the main priorities.
One of those priorities is the metaverse, a largely unrealized virtual world that has plagued users and could take years to turn a profit, if at all. The company’s metaverse division, Reality Labs, lost $13.7 billion for 2022, up from a loss of $10.2 billion in 2021.
Investors have tried to pressure Zuckerberg to reduce his metaverse investment, but to no avail.
In December, John Carmack, a pioneer of virtual reality, left his high-level consulting role at Meta, where he worked on the metaverse. They tweeted on the way out“I’m always quite frustrated with how things are done in FB / Meta. Everything needed for spectacular success is there, but it can’t be put together effectively.
Slowly with the metaverse and three quarters in a row of years of declining revenue, however, did not stop stock buybacks in Meta. In its latest earnings statement, Meta said it has increased its share buyback authority by $40 billion, noting that last year it bought back about $28 billion.
Many tech companies that have been hiring during the pandemic, as demand for their services has surged, have carried out massive layoffs in recent months, sparking tensions as the latest US jobs report showed unemployment at its lowest level in 50 years.
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