Alarm in Meta: they anticipate a new wave of massive layoffs for the “year of efficiency”

2022 has been a difficult year for Meta, with layoffs, restructuring of some teams and new priorities. Mark Zuckerberg assured that this “difficult” period had been left behind and that it would be 2023 “the year of efficiency”even if it will end up being very similar, because new layoffs are expected, increased investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and less metaverse, the star project that doesn’t finish starting.

As reported Bloombergthe largest social media company in the world is cutting more jobs, in addition to the note 13% reduction last November which affected 11,000 workers. This upcoming round of cuts is driven by financial goals and is independent of the “flattening”, underlined internal sources consulted by this means.

This new round of layoffs is expected to end next week, according to sources familiar with the matter. Those who work on the plan hope to have it ready before The CEO takes paternity leave for his third childwhich may be imminent, these same sources point to this medium.

Zuckerberg had already warned in January that cuts were coming, even if he disguised them as efficiency: “We are working to flatten our organizational structure and remove some layers from middle management to make faster decisions, as well as implement AI tools to help our engineers be more productive.”

Meta’s CEO is also trying to get the most out of his employees, those who continue to work at the parent company of Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook. According to Bloomberg, top-level managers will share tasks with their subordinates to eliminate duplication and be as efficient as possible.

Meta thus tries to resist the economic storm. The tech firm just weathered a tough year: It posted net income of $23.2 billion in 2022, which is a 41% decline from its year-earlier result, the company reported at the start of the report. ‘year. The good news came with the announcement of the share buyback plan 40,000 million dollarswhich thrilled investors.

Zuckerberg also does not ignore the failure of the metaverse, in which millions of dollars have been involved so far and which has brought him only losses, at least for now. Reality Labs, the department charged with developing it, increased losses by 34% in 2022, to $13.717 billion. It is the third year that the entrepreneur has been disappointed, because he has remained in the red and has also reduced his turnover 5% annually, up to 2,159 million.

From the metaverse to artificial intelligence

Meta is patching and has decided to open up its Horizon Worlds virtual reality platform to minors, to see if interest in the metaverse permeates that segment. Pretend you can participate adolescents aged 13 to 17according to an internal document viewed by the Wall Street Journal.

But, out of conviction or out of necessity, Meta has begun to refocus its strategy. Now it will also compete for the creation of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, modeled on ChatGPT.

“We’re exploring experiences with text (like chatting on WhatsApp and Messenger), with images (like Instagram creative filters and ad formats), and with video and multimodal experiences. We have a lot of foundational work to do before we get to really futuristic experiences, but I’m excited about all the new stuff we’ll be building along the way,” the CEO said in a Facebook post, in a new twist from the manager, who is looking for the efficiency (cuts and equal profit) at all costs.