Meta lays off employees across multiple teams

Multiple teams at Meta were hit by layoffs on Wednesday, the company confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch, noting these changes were made to reallocate resources within the company. 

“Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy,” said a Meta spokesperson in an emailed statement. “This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”

Employees working on Reality Labs, Instagram, and WhatsApp were affected by the layoffs, according to The Verge.

Former Meta employees took to social media to announce they were laid off. Employees who previously worked on Facebook, recruiting, legal operations, and design said they had been laid off on Wednesday in social media posts viewed by TechCrunch.

A Meta spokesperson tells TechCrunch that Threads, recruiting, and legal operations were not impacted by the reorganization and there were no layoffs there.

One former Meta employee, who worked in one of these organizations, tells TechCrunch that some employees were offered different positions under new contracts, or told they could take a severance package instead. Several took the severance package, according to the source.

Meta declined to comment on the record about how many employees were affected and what orgs they were part of. The former employee tells TechCrunch that more than a dozen people on their team were notified that their roles were affected via video calls on Wednesday. Some employees affected on Wednesday received six weeks of severance pay, according to the former Meta employee. (The employee spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive matter.)

In recent years, Meta has laid off a large amount of its workforce to rightsize the company following aggressive pandemic hiring. In 2022, Meta laid off roughly 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 employees, for which CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally took responsibility. In 2023, Meta laid off another 10,000 employees and withdrew 5,000 open roles it had yet to fill.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that a former Meta employee, who announced on social media that they were laid off, worked on Threads. That employee previously worked on Threads, and mentioned Threads in their post, but worked on a different team when they were laid off on Wednesday. Meta reached out to clarify.