Athira Sethu
Kochi, 18 October 2024
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, announced its third round of layoffs this year. Last year’s were two rounds in 2022 and 2023, totaling 21,000 employees let go. The round impacts employees across many of its key teams: WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads, but is much smaller.
Meta employee Jane Manchun Wong has posted on Threads about how she is feeling after losing her job. Here, she writes she is “still trying to process” the news of her layoff and thanks teammates for the journey that all of them shared within Meta. She sends out a call to all interested in collaborating with her in software and security engineering areas.
Meta confirmed the layoffs in a statement to The Verge. “Meta is taking steps to reconfigure resources to be more closely aligned with our long-term goals and strategy,” said Dave Arnold, a Meta spokesperson. That restructuring also involves moving some teams to other locations and putting some of its employees into different roles. It’s not saying how many people are affected.
Meta has been focusing on operating more efficiently, said Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in March 2023. The company wants to be leaner and smaller, as such, with a smaller workforce, which will help prioritize the most important things of the company, where employees will be more productive and satisfied in their work, he added.
For its part, Meta has said nothing regarding the layoffs, but it can be realized that the firm is still in the process of shaping and structuring the workforce to fit its long-term vision.
