Meta continues to lay off 5,000 employees this week

Meta is rolling out the company’s next round of new layoffs, which are estimated to affect around 5,000 jobs. The series of layoffs carried out by Meta since November last year until now is said to be part of the “Effective Year” plan that Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously announced in a blog post in March that the company would cut 10,000 jobs in two waves of layoffs at the end of April and May, although the company has already cut back. 11,000 positions last year.

This week’s layoffs are expected to hit divisions that include advertising sales, marketing, media and partnerships. While the April layoffs affected tech groups.

Meta also stopped hiring about 5,000 vacancies that began last year. A total of about 21,000 employees were laid off at Meta, reducing the company’s global headcount by about a quarter since November, compared with 87,000 employees at the time. Facebook hasn’t changed its name.

Many Meta employees are waiting anxiously because they do not know if they will be part of this layoff or not. Meanwhile, Meta has spent $13.7 billion on Reality Labs, the company’s metaverse development division. Investors are skeptical of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that he won’t give up the metaverse, even if the company’s virtual reality and augmented reality project management division makes a loss. 4 billion USD in the first quarter of 2023.

In addition to “burning money” into the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg also did not forget to pursue the AI ​​field that Big Tech is currently racing.

Just last month, Meta unveiled its own generic AI encryption tool as well as a tool for advertisers called AI Sandbox. In the future, Meta is working on its own custom chips and a supercomputer to support large-scale AI research. This project could help Meta compete with companies like Microsoft or Google, which have been developing their own similar supercomputers.