Meta announced another round of significant layoffs on Tuesday, as the parent company of Facebook and Instagram said it would cut about 10,000 jobs.
The move comes four months after Meta cut 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 people.
“This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to employees titled “Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency.”
Update / Editor’s note: A Meta spokesperson misunderstood an earlier GeekWire inquiry in regard to whether the layoffs would impact Seattle-area workers. The spokesperson did not provide details on possible cuts in the region, where Meta employs more than 8,000 people at campuses in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood and in Bellevue’s Spring District development.
Paresh Rajwat took over as the head of office for Meta in Seattle last October, a month before the first big layoff.
“We had a growth projection which was pretty steep,” Rajwat said in a GeekWire interview at the time. “And looking at the economic environment and how the market is trending, we will drastically reduce growth.”
Zuckerberg said over the next couple of months, restructuring plans will flatten orgs, cancel lower priority projects, and reduce hiring rates. The company’s recruiting team will be further cut, he said, and 5,000 open roles that haven’t been filled will be closed.
Zuckerberg said the ultimate goal is to build a leaner, more technical company and improve business performance to enable Meta’s long term vision. The company had 87,000 employees at its peak last year.
Meta, which first established its Seattle engineering outpost in 2010, revealed earlier this year that it was giving up office space in the region amid the shift to hybrid work and the broader tech downturn. The company is subleasing a 6-story space at the Arbor Blocks 333 building near downtown Seattle, as well as Block 6, a 325,000 square-foot space at the Spring District.
But its distributed work model is under scrutiny as part of the company’s efficiency plan. Zuckerberg said that analysis shows that engineers who are earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.
Amazon, which cut 18,000 jobs in its layoffs, announced last month that it wants corporate and tech workers back in the office at least three days a week.
“I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person,” Zuckerberg said in his memo.
Meta is one of numerous tech companies to make layoffs in recent months, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and and many startups in the Seattle area and Silicon Valley.
