Tomorrow, Meta will begin the layoff process among the company’s employees in Israel – this is what “Calcalist” learned. Although the number of employees who will be laid off is unknown, it is likely a significant number. About 900 people are employed in Israel in total. Earlier today, Meta announced the layoffs of 10,000 of the company’s employees worldwide, about 13% of the workforce. This, after last November it carried out a significant round of layoffs of 11,000 employees.
The layoffs in Israel will be held in several stages, similar to layoffs in the rest of the world. Tomorrow, in the first instance, the company’s recruiters will be fired, a necessary step in light of the company’s announcement that it will stop recruiting for 5,000 unfilled positions. In the next step, after Passover, workers from the technological divisions will be laid off, and in May, workers from the company’s business divisions will be laid off.
Meta Israel did not respond to the report and referred to a post on the subject published on Facebook by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In some ways, the current round of layoffs at Meta is more severe than the previous round carried out by the company last November. Although in the current round, from an absolute point of view, the number is lower – but in terms of the scope of the workforce, the number is the same and stands at about 13%. Along with the layoffs, Meta also announced the cancellation of 5,000 positions of open positions for which it had hoped to recruit workers, so that the company is not only cutting back in the immediate present but also in the strategic future.
The worrying picture that emerges is not of a company making necessary adjustments to a difficult market, but of an organization fighting for its very existence.
The layoffs are presented by the company as part of the “year of efficiency” announced by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in January. Last month, Zuckerberg informed analysts in a conversation with analysts that Meta plans to “cut projects whose performance is not good or are no longer defined as critical,” and this at the same time as “removing layers of middle management level to make decisions faster.” The next step will reach the core of Meta, its technical division, which is also expected to undergo a restructuring procedure.
“We expect to announce layoffs and restructuring in our technology groups at the end of April, and our business groups at the end of May,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees posted on his Facebook account. He added that it is possible that the economic situation and the geopolitical instability will increase the explosiveness and harm growth and innovation in the coming years. “We will have to act more efficiently to ensure success,” he clarified, but nevertheless left a narrow opening of hope: “After the reorganization, we plan to cancel the hiring freeze in each group.” This promise should be taken with a grain of salt, as well as Zuckerberg’s comments about efficiency and macro difficulties that he claims are beyond Meta’s control. The market is problematic at the moment and all companies are facing challenges beyond their control, but among the technology giants, Meta is the only one forced out during another significant layoff.
2022 was tough for all tech giants, but for Meta it was especially tough, with a 1% drop in revenue to $116.61 billion and a 41% drop in net profit to $23.2 billion. The reason for this is that while the others have a diverse revenue mix, almost all of Meta’s revenue comes from the advertising market and its reduction in the past year hit it particularly hard. In addition, its strategic future looks less promising than the others, with an expensive bet on the Metaverse that is not likely to pay off soon, if at all, and a hasty entry into the world of creative artificial intelligence, which forces it to spread even more its dwindling resources anyway. Meta Israel chose not to respond