Meta (formerly Facebook) plans on cutting costs by 10 percent, including staff reductions.
According to The Wall Street Journal, managers are driving those reductions via team reorganizations, which give impacted employees “a limited window to apply for other roles within the company.” In theory, that will allow Meta to reduce overall headcount without the negative headlines that come with formal rounds of layoffs.
It’s unclear how many employees will be potentially impacted by Meta’s moves; the company’s workforce currently totals 83,553 employees. Over the past several months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said repeatedly he expects the company’s internal pace of work to increase, with fewer resources for staffers and more pressure to complete projects on deadline.
Google is reportedly engaged in a similar practice, with certain employees required to find a new job internally within 90 days or risk termination. It’s also unclear in that instance how many employees are impacted; the Journal referred to Google’s startup incubator Area 120 as a prime target, although that unit supposedly employs just over 100 people—a tiny sliver of Google’s overall headcount.
Not every company is cutting back on technologists, of course. American Express just announced plans to hire more than 1,500 specialists in key tech areas such as data science and software engineering. Meanwhile, industries as varied as manufacturing, retail, and finance are hiring droves of technologists to assist in critical tech operations.
During the pandemic, tech giants such as Meta and Google went on significant hiring sprees. A nation of newly remote workers boosted the market for cloud services, necessitating the hiring of thousands of technologists. But widespread fears of recession, combined with a slackening ad market, now threaten to reduce revenues; for Meta, Apple’s new iOS privacy controls are also limiting the company’s ability to effectively monetize user data. Whatever the future holds, it’s clear the executives at these companies see cutting costs as the way forward.
