The layoffs have been done in several departments like administration, human resources, and marketing among others. The exact number of employees that have been impacted is unknown right now.
A report reveals that Meta has removed people at levels and it is not limited to a certain category of employees. “Current layoffs are part of the announcement made previously only.
This time around layoffs were from Admin, Human Resources (HR), Marketing, etc.
This downsizing round was across the hierarchy, people at all levels have been impacted,” an employee who is familiar with the matter told Business Today.
A former Meta employee revealed that the tech company is giving the same compensation package that it offered to previously laid-off employees.
“Severance is similar to what laid-off employees received in previous rounds, roughly 3 months base pay.
Apart from that there is pay depending on duration of employment. There is also the option of health insurance extension,” the former employee said.
According to details revealed in the official blog post, Meta promised to provide 16 weeks of base severance pay as well as two additional weeks of pay for every year of service.
The tech giant also said that Meta would also offer health care assistance by paying for the expenses. This offer is for employees and their families, which will be applicable for six months. The company has also previously said that it will provide three months of career support too with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.
The fresh round of layoffs is the ones that Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced back in March 2023.
He revealed that 10,000 more employees would receive pink slips and explained that the tech company has to take this tough decision to save costs.
So far, the tech giant has removed 27,000 employees from its company. It first sacked as many as 11,000 workers in November last year (2023) and the process for the same continued until February.
There are several reasons why the tech company is firing so many employees. Zuckerberg explained in the blog post that the economic downturn and the slow growth that Meta has been witnessing is one of the reasons. Due to this, the company has been witnessing low revenue growth. In an email, the tech giant also stated that it over-hired in the past few years because of business needs. But, now that Meta is witnessing slow growth and struggling in terms of revenue.
Zuckerberg wrote in a note to his employees in March, “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.”
As per SEC filings, the company’s Q1 FY 2023 revenue stood at $28.65 billion, an increase of 3 per cent year-over-year, and an increase of 6 per cent year-over-year on a constant currency basis.
The company also incurred expenses of $21.42 billion, up 10 per cent year-over-year. The uptrend in expenses was driven mostly by restructuring costs which included severance pay and other benefits paid to separated employees.
After announcing its quarterly financial results, the company said in a statement, “In 2022, we initiated several measures to pursue greater efficiency and to realign our business and strategic priorities.
As of March 31, 2023, we have substantially completed the 2022 employee layoffs while continuing to assess facilities consolidation and data center restructuring initiatives. We incurred additional pre-tax restructuring charges of $621 million in the first quarter of 2023.”
“In March 2023, we announced three rounds of planned layoffs to further reduce our company size by approximately 10,000 employees across the Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL) segments. In connection with these layoffs, we expect to incur total pre-tax severance and related personnel costs of approximately $1 billion, of which $523 million was recognized during the first quarter of 2023 and the remaining charges will be substantially recorded by the end of 2023,” Meta added.
