Meta, parent company of Facebook, announces a second wave of massive layoffs

Facebook's Meta logo, at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on October 28, 2021. © Tony Avelar/AP

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Meta, parent company of social networks Facebook and Instagram, will cut 10,000 more jobs after a first wave of 11,000 layoffs in early November, group CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday.

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At the end of these two waves, Meta will have cut its workforce by 24%, a brutal change of gear for a group that had never launched a social plan in nearly 20 years of existence.

The giant of Menlo Park (California) will remove from its organization chart 5,000 positions currently unoccupied and for which there will be no recruitment, the manager said in a press release.

The list of positions concerned will be unveiled at the end of April and the restructuring will be carried out by the end of the year.

For Mark Zuckerberg, the decision is justified by the need to “

 make [de Meta] a better technology company

 ” and “

 to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment, so that we can carry out our long-term vision

 ”.

The co-founder of Facebook, who alone embodies the social network, took up the term used during the presentation of the annual results, at the beginning of February, namely that 2023 must be "the year of efficiency"

 for

 Meta.

A more competitive market

In addition to the job cuts, the company will slow down the pace of its hiring, added Mark Zuckerberg, who also plans to " 

cancel non-priority projects 

".

The group had already announced a hiring freeze until the end of March 2023.

After having posted insolent growth since its creation, Facebook, which became Meta at the end of 2021, has suffered, since 2022, from the slowdown in online advertising.

The movement is accentuated by the modification of the operating system of the iPhone (iOS), which no longer allows the platform to collect as much data on its users as before.

In addition, Facebook and Instagram are subject to increasingly strong competition, in particular from the video platform TikTok, which is cutting back on its market share.

In addition, Meta is suffering, like the entire

technology industry

, from the Fed's forced march in interest rate hikes, which penalizes a very cash-intensive sector to finance its development.

In 2022, Meta's revenue contracted 1% to $116.6 billion.

►Also read: WhatsApp threatens to leave the United Kingdom which wants to strengthen control of encrypted messaging

(With

AFP

)

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