TECH NEWS – In addition to another round of layoffs, Mark Zuckerberg’s company has eliminated 5,000 job vacancies.

Four months ago, we reported that Meta had put more than 11,000 people out of work. At the time, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had to resort to this because of erroneous forecasts of pandemic cash flow growth and “the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and the ads signal loss.” In the third quarter of 2022, Meta generated $27.7 billion in cash flow, of which net profit was $4.3 billion. “new economic realities” (higher interest rates, lack of geopolitical stability, more regulation) have led it to fire more people.

Zuckerberg is trying to sell it all as “a year of efficiency” and already has “restructuring plans focused on downsizing, canceling lower priority projects and reducing hiring rates.” The team of headhunters will get the cuts today, the technology people in April, and those in business departments in May. To quote from his announcement post, which he, of course, published on Facebook:

“This will be tough, and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission, and I’m grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways as before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve. All groups need to get leaner and more efficient to enable our technology groups to get as lean and efficient as possible. We will ensure we meet all our binding and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently. We can be bolder and make decisions that other companies can’t, so we put together a financial plan that enables us to invest heavily in the future while delivering sustainable results as long as we run every team more efficiently. Our changes will enable us to meet this financial plan.”

The company’s streamlining also includes eliminating layers of management and the “cancellation of duplicative or lower priority projects.” For Zuckerberg, technology would be the priority at Meta, which is why they will “return to a more optimal mix of engineers and other roles.” He was so into efficiency that he mentioned it in some format twenty times in the post. We can’t have much faith in him.

Source: PCGamer