According to the update, the layoffs will be staggered over the next couple of months. The tech giant’s recruiting staff are set to know whether they’re impacted tomorrow, followed by announcements in April regarding tech group restructures and layoffs, and then changes concerning the company’s business groups are set to be declared in late May.

In addition to the job cuts, 5,000 unfilled roles will be closed as hiring temporarily pauses.

This latest round of layoffs comes after Meta’s around 13% headcount reduction in November.

In this particular instance, however, the company references its “Year of Efficiency” efforts — aiming to “improve financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long term vision” — as the reason underpinning today’s announcement.

After a period of restructuring, reducing hiring rates, and cancelling lower priority projects, Zuckerberg said that the company aims to hire again later on in the year.

“After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group. Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.

“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision.”

The company’s co-founder and CEO also said, “My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.”

So What’s Been Happening?

Google, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, IBM, Dell, Spotify, Zoom, NetApp, PayPal, Yahoo, and GitHub have all announced major global layoffs – but the reasons range dramatically.

Google and Microsoft are both participating in the AI race, as each company competes with their new chatbots.

Both companies directly addressed their pivot to prioritise AI innovation – staff in other sectors took the hit after each team hired a surplus during the pandemic.

Meta’s announcement was not so specific, but the company’s staff expected cuts as earnings dropped. The company was affected by changing privacy policies which impacted their ad selling capabilities – new GDPR rulings are set to majorly impact the use of personalised ads on Facebook and Instagram, and Zuckerberg said that those in the Family of Apps and Reality departments would be hit the hardest.

Layoffs at Yahoo! were largely the result of restructuring in its advertising departments so it would not be in direct competition with market dominators like Meta and Google.

Dell’s lay-offs were directly linked to a decrease in hardware purchases – most of their revenue came from personal computer sales, and with many returning to the office, these plummeted.

Similarly, Zoom announced it was cutting 15% of it’s workforce, likely driven by the return to the office and the advancement of other video conferencing services that are aligned with other services, like Microsoft Teams.

Spotify and PayPal’s announcements were much less specific, as neither company announced why they were firing or what departments would be most affected.

Twitter had a much more publicly contentious round of layoffs. About 50% of its global staff were fired, with some even locked out of their offices. Elon Musk’s infamous purchase of the company has exhausted the tech news cycle, and the firings came due to a massive loss in revenue as advertisers backed out of the platform.

IBM’s layoffs were a different story – two spin offs from the company meant IBM was effectively releasing workers through the layoffs. The company was actually performing quite well and intends to continue hiring during the progress.

For many companies, the tidal turn is simply a reflection of changing times after the pandemic – demand for tech was high across the board during the pandemic, and many giants took the opportunity to vacuum up talent. Now, the shift in the economy has left tech companies scrambling to make up for lost demand, and often they’ve turned to letting go their most valuable asset: people.

“The tech sector has pivoted from ‘the great resignation’ to ‘the great redundancy’ in the space of only a few months,” Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru said. “Bullish post-Covid hiring collided with a tough macroeconomic outlook, just as the well of cheap investment cash dried up under the heat of interest rate hikes.”

Many tech workers were attracted to big companies due to a perception of stability as well as more benefits and larger salaries.

“However, given the size and scale of the layoffs, people are now doubting the stability of the largest players and are looking to up-and-coming smaller firms rather than the Big Tech monoliths,” Laurent Descout, CEO of Neo commented.

To read further commentary on the impact of the recent tech layoffs, click here.

Get all the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

To subscribe, click here.