Mark Zuckerberg calls second round of job cuts "tough" but inevitable

Washington: After Meta announced that another wave of job cuts is about to hit the company, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the move will be tough but there is no way around that.

In an email to employees, he said Meta will shed 10,000 jobs over the next few months and the main target will be middle management. 5,000 other roles will remain unfilled in the company's "year of efficiency". It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success, he added.

According to AFP, the recruitment department will be hit first because Meta is putting an end to the hiring spree that started during the pandemic. Tech and business departments will be affected "in a small number of cases'' in the subsequent months. The process may go on till the end of the year.

"For most of our history, we saw rapid revenue growth year after year and had the resources to invest in many new products. But last year was a humbling wake-up call. I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years," said the Facebound founder.

After the tough economy of 2022, Meta is also under pressure due to the gamble on the Metaverse virtual reality project. The early analysis showed that engineers working together in person were more efficient than those working remotely. This is not great for a virtual reality platform. Zuckerberg said the company was "focusing on understanding this further."

After the announcement of the latest job cuts on Tuesday, Meta share prices went up by 6%. Zuckerberg said he will make the organisation flatter by removing multiple layers of management. This means that many managers will be ordered to become "individual contributors." He added that he was pleasantly surprised by the benefits of running a more tightly organised operation where "many things have gone faster" with the elimination of lower-priority projects.