Meta has begun laying off hundreds of employees across multiple divisions including Reality Labs, Facebook, recruiting, sales, and global operations, with affected staff announcing their departures on LinkedIn.
SAN FRANCISCO: Meta is cutting jobs again. The social media giant began laying off hundreds of employees on Wednesday, with the cuts sweeping across some of its most prominent divisions including Reality Labs, Facebook, recruiting, sales, and global operations.
The scale of the layoffs emerged through a combination of insider sources and LinkedIn posts from affected employees, several of whom announced publicly that their roles had been eliminated. Workers from Reality Labs, Meta’s ambitious and heavily funded augmented and virtual reality division, were among those impacted, alongside staff from recruitment and other corporate functions.
A Meta spokesperson offered a measured response to the news. “Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals. Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted,” the company said in a statement.
The language is familiar. Meta has been through several rounds of significant job cuts in recent years, most notably its 2022 and 2023 reductions which together eliminated tens of thousands of roles as the company recalibrated following a period of aggressive pandemic-era hiring. Wednesday’s cuts appear smaller in scale but signal that the restructuring mindset at Meta has not gone away.
Reality Labs in particular has been under the microscope for some time. The division, which houses Meta’s metaverse and wearable technology ambitions, has absorbed billions of dollars in losses year after year while the commercial case for its products continues to be a work in progress.
For the hundreds of employees walking out of Meta this week, the corporate rationale offers little comfort. In a technology sector that has been shedding jobs with remarkable consistency, finding the next opportunity remains the more pressing concern.
