Facebook parent company Meta is planning to reduce the number of its employees for the first time since its establishment in 2004.
The major budget cut move will mark the end of an era of the social media company’s rapid growth.
In a weekly question and answer session with employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will temporarily stop hiring new workers and restructure teams in a bid to cut costs and “realign priorities”.
This means that the company, with over 80,000 workers, will not replace employees who leave the company, transferring employees within teams and managing employees that are not succeeding. The step will make the company smaller in 2023 than it is in 2022.
“Individual teams would sort out how to handle headcount changes,” Bloomberg News reported.
Zuckerberg further said that the budget would be reduced in most teams, including the growing ones. Meta resolved to the plan because of the tough economic times.
“I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now. But from what we are seeing, it does not yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg said.
“Our plan is to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year. Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas, and I wanted to give our leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition, and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives,” he added.
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