Meta Fires Employees After CEO Announces Year Of Efficiency

Meta is laying off employees across multiple teams at WhatsApp, Instagram, and its parent company units after Zuckerberg announced a year of efficiency.

Meta has made massive layoffs in the past three years owing to huge restructuring and resource optimization efforts across all products. In mid-2024, the layoff trend cooled down, providing a sigh of relief to all team members. In an abrupt change of wave, Meta laid off employees on Wednesday across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, according to internal members familiar with the matter.

Meta’s employees woke up to shocking news as they were informed of being removed without themselves being a cause for the action. “Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy. This includes moving some teams to different locations and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this, when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees,” communicated a Meta spokesperson via email to employees.

Mark Zuckerberg’s public statements around improving efficiency, introducing new technologies, and reshaping the tech landscape have usually been followed by a significant number of team members getting removed. While coincidences may exist in the timelines, the connecting dots have been repeated enough times to make the next big announcement a matter of risk for internal teams.

Some Meta employees have already begun posting on social media platforms about them being laid off. One of them is Jane Manchun Wong, who was hired for her tremendous talent of discovering Meta’s unreleased developments before the world could.

Meta’s over-optimism in 2022 led to its first and biggest layoff round, where it removed 11,000 employees following some key post-COVID business announcements. The company then laid off over 10,000 employees as part of CEO Zuckerberg’s year of efficiency in 2023. This one, however, does not feel like a mass trigger. Rather, it looks like a company-wide micro-structuring effort across departments that occurred at the same time. The total number of employees laid off is much smaller than the masses, though the exact number has not yet been revealed.