Meta laid off around 100 workers in permanent “efficiency mode”.

About 100 people were affected by the latest round of restructuring and the associated reallocation of some resources within Meta, three people with knowledge of the company said Assets. Such changes and associated gradual staff cuts have been a common occurrence at Meta this year, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg sticks to his promise that the “Year of Efficiency” 2023 will become an “integral” part of his company's future operations. A handful of employees at Instagram and Messenger were laid off earlier this year amid other team restructuring and the elimination of certain job titles.

This week's cuts mark at least the third time this year that Meta has undergone phased layoffs. This time it mainly affected people who worked on Instagram, Facebook and Reality Labs, say the well-known people. Many of those affected were software engineers whose specific roles were eliminated, but some monetization positions were also eliminated. The Verge initially reported that layoffs were occurring at Meta, although no details were disclosed.

Most affected individuals were informed several weeks in advance that their positions would either be eliminated or moved to a new team or location, and they were allowed to apply internally for other positions made available to them. Some were successful. Some weren't. Others accepted four months of severance pay in advance rather than go through that process, people familiar with them said.

The firings come separate from a disciplinary action Meta took last week that resulted in about 20 people being fired from its Los Angeles office for misusing GrubHub credits. The credits were specifically given to employees to purchase meals while working in the office. However, some were found to have used the credits for personal items or home deliveries over the course of several months, as first reported by the FT.

Meta, which had 70,799 full-time employees at the end of the last reported quarter, cut tens of thousands of employees throughout 2022 and 2023 in the wake of the pandemic. While the company didn't experience any such mass layoffs in 2024, team-specific restructuring felt “constant” this year, one person said Assets, noting that Reality Labs apparently goes through a reorganization “every few months.”

Another person said that while such changes have long been part of Meta's operations, a new push toward work on AI projects is leading to more and more resources being directed toward AI and infrastructure teams. The company is also going through a process of “reassigning” roles, deciding where to physically house the majority of certain teams given a three-day office work assignment that has resulted in some jobs being moved or eliminated, the person said.

“Some teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and site strategy,” a Meta spokesperson said Assets. “This includes moving some teams to other locations and moving some employees to other roles. In situations like this where a position is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for the affected employees.”

However, not all those laid off received such notice, two sources said Assets. Several people were “surprised” by emails that landed in their inboxes this week explaining that their last day of work would be this Friday because their role had been axed. “Not everyone was treated equally,” one of the people said.

Several laid-off employees had been on the job for a year or less, according to two sources. Jane Manchu Wong, who became known online for reverse engineering incoming features for social media platforms before they were announced, joined Meta last year to work on the latest platform, Threads. However, this year she moved to a team within Instagram that was affected by this round of layoffs. Wong revealed that she was affected by the cuts at Threads. However, no one working on the Threads team was fired.

Despite the gradual nature of this latest round of layoffs, workers at Meta expect more cuts like this, either later this year or early next year. Although the company is hiring more employees, headcount is being kept “very tight” and performance reviews are stricter than ever.

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