Facebook-parent Meta Platforms on Tuesday became the first major global tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs involving about 10,000 employees across regions.
“Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post to company staff.
This comes four months after the tech major fired more than 11,000 people - about 13 per cent of its workforce - citing efforts to become “a leaner and more efficient company”.
“The company is not seeing any revenue pick up and so has to go with cost optimisation to answer to the investor community,” reasoned Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO of HR consultancy CIEL HR.
In addition to job cuts and reducing the hiring rate, the tech major intends to carry out restructuring to flatten the organisational structure and cancel lower priority projects as part of its larger plan.
“We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding that the timelines for international teams will look different while it may take through the end of the year to implement all the said changes.
A deteriorating global economy has seen layoffs to the tune of nearly 2,90,000 jobs in the tech sector - including from top names such as Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, according to insights provider - layoffs.fyi.
“Companies are restructuring to align with the tumultuous market conditions and to mitigate dip in financial performance, warranting layoffs to cut costs and improve efficiency,” A R Ramesh, Director - Managed services & Professional staffing, Adecco India, explained.
“Layoffs will continue to happen this year for efficiency to move up across job roles,” predicted Supaul Chanda, Business Head at talent acquisition firm Otomeyt.
The fate of Meta’s employees in India remains unclear as DH’s queries to the company’s India arm went unanswered.
“In the short run, this lay-off will have implications in India as some of the project teams, development teams and support teams from India will have to be pruned,” said Mishra, adding that in the longer term, India has an advantage as Meta will leverage engineers in India to develop their products for India, which is a huge market for the company.
Speaking on the immediate impact of the wave of layoffs for India, Ramesh said - “The current lay-off climate will potentially lead to a short-term dip in hiring in the technology sector, owing to the rationalisation of remuneration and tempered hiring sentiment.” However, the long-term impact is likely to be less significant, as other tech companies continue to expand their operations and attract talent in India, he added.