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It’s been an uncertain couple of years to be a Meta employee. Now, even those who survived the job cuts seen at the Facebook parent company over the past 2 years are back in the firing line, with The Verge reporting on Wednesday that Meta is once again laying off employees across its various departments, including WhatsApp, Reality Labs, and Instagram.

After a massive hiring spree across the previous decade, which escalated in the years following the pandemic, headcount at the tech giant peaked at more than 86,000 employees in 2022. However, the company’s post-Covid boom — as well as a very public rebrand into a metaverse-focused company with a name to match — was perhaps too ambitious. As sales declined, and losses in its virtual reality division mounted, the company’s share price tumbled, falling nearly 70% between its summer 2021 peak and the end of 2022.

Meta morphs

In November 2022, 13% of the company (11,000 employees) were laid off, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing in the subsequent Q4 earnings call that 2023 would be Meta’s “year of efficiency”. Cut to present day, and — after another two rounds of layoffs in 2023, and then two more rounds occurring in 2024 so far — Meta still seems to be in throes of its efficiency era.

That said, the business overall appears to be in a healthier place. Ad spending drove revenues north of $39 billion (+22% YoY) in the company’s most recent quarter, and the latest cuts seem to be, at least partly, a reallocation of resources. According to The Verge, by contrast with prior mass company layoffs, this most recent round of job losses is on a much smaller, team-specific scale, as Meta looks to restructure as part of its strategy shift towards AI. Indeed, despite the headlines this year, the company has actually added to its headcount; its filings reveal that it has added 4,000 jobs between the end of 2023 and Q2 ‘24.