More job losses expected at Facebook parent Meta globally on top of thousands already confirmed

Facebook’s parent company Meta is expected to announce thousands of job losses globally as early as this week, Bloomberg has reported.

n November the tech giant, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, confirmed that 11,000 jobs across its 87,000-person strong global operation were being cut, including 350 roles in Ireland.

It is now expected that the world’s largest social networking company will reduce numbers further in a bid to become more ‘efficient’.

When asked by Independent.ie if additional Irish job losses were planned, a spokesperson for Meta said the company is “not commenting” on the reported cuts.

The spokesperson said Meta has “nothing further to add to what Mark [Zuckerberg] posted about on the ‘year of efficiency’ at the beginning of February… following the earning’s call”.

“In the post and earnings call he outlined the approach to managing headcount this year,” the spokesperson added.

“Before getting into our product priorities, I want to discuss my management theme for 2023, which is the ‘year of efficiency’,” Mr Zuckerberg said in February.

“We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end. Since then, we’ve taken some additional steps like working with our infrastructure team on how to deliver our roadmap while spending less on capex (capital expenditure).”

The company’s founder confirmed that next “some layers of middle management” would be removed and projects that “aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial” would be cut.

“Next, we’re working on flattening our org (organisation) structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive. As part of this, we’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial, but my main focus is on increasing the efficiency of how we execute our top priorities,” he added.

It is understood the imminent round of cuts is being driven by financial targets and is separate from the “flattening” outlined last month, those familiar with the matter said.

It comes as a new report from the Central Bank said tech job losses in Ireland could be as high as 2,307.

The number of layoffs already confirmed in Ireland is 1,474, or 0.9pc of the current tech workforce, a Central Bank report found. The higher number of layoffs would amount to 1.4pc of the tech sector or 6.2pc of the numbers hired during the pandemic.

The report was published before US tech giant Microsoft announced a further 60 layoffs in Ireland.