Meta Has Begun Laying Off Technical Employees In Its Latest Round Of Layoffs

As part of Meta's most recent round of layoffs, announced in March, the company began cutting off employees in technical jobs on Wednesday.

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Employees with technical skills such as user experience, software engineering, graphics programming, and other professions revealed on LinkedIn on Wednesday morning that they had been let go by the firm. A Meta representative confirmed to Trade Algo that the layoffs had begun.

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According to one affected employee, the layoffs on Wednesday also affected product-facing teams, and Meta expects to reduce business-facing functions such as finance, legal, and HR beginning in May. According to the employee, who revealed the layoffs on the condition of anonymity in order to talk openly, Meta hinted that IT teams that were not affected by Wednesday's cuts may be included in layoffs next month.

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According to LinkedIn posts, the layoffs also affected several professionals who worked as gaming programmers. According to a Meta job offering, gameplay engineers work on virtual and augmented reality technologies.

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"I woke up this morning to the unfortunate news that I was one of the many laid-off from Meta today," commented a Facebook business program manager on Linkedin.

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With ad income falling last year and its stock price plummeting, Facebook's parent company announced its first round of layoffs in November, impacting around 11,000 employees. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg then named 2023 the "year of efficiency," and announced an additional 10,000 employee cutbacks in March, with restructuring expenses ranging from $3 billion to $5 billion.

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As Zuckerberg stated at the time, the upcoming round of layoffs in April is aimed at technical personnel. He stated that business group layoffs will take effect in late May.

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The reduction has been praised by Wall Street. After losing nearly two-thirds of their value last year, Meta shares have risen 81% this year. Revenue has fallen for three consecutive quarters, and analysts expect another decrease when Meta releases first-quarter profits next week. The company's prior estimate aimed for revenues of $26 billion to $28.5 billion, which indicates the company's revenue downturn might come to a stop if Meta hits the top end of the range.

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While its primary company is suffering from an internet advertising recession, Meta is spending billions of dollars every quarter building technology for the metaverse, a massive and risky gamble on a young sector that has yet to break through the mainstream. Meta's Reality Labs business, entrusted with developing the metaverse, reported a $4.28 billion operating loss in the fourth quarter, bringing the unit's overall losses for 2022 to $13.72 billion.