Previously, we reported that Meta is allegedly planning to commence another round of layoff, well, that is now an official story as the company is said to planning over 10,000 job cuts over the next coming months.

The company has also closed hiring for 5,000 open roles while canceling low-priority projects, says the company CEO, Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday.

It’s surprising how a lot has gone worse since the previous mass layoff which saw over 11,000 job cuts at the company.

The tech giant will commence the first wave of layoffs as soon as this week. Those that will be impacted will include the company’s recruiting organization and then it will be followed by the tech department as early as April while the third wave will affect busies-related roles by late May.

“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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a memo to employees that were also posted on his Facebook page.

The Meta boss made it known that the main reason for the mass layoffs is due to the company’s revenue collapse last year which he referred to as a humbling wake-up call while telling employees that “we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.”

“Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation,” he wrote. “Given this outlook, we’ll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success.”

Meta also stated in a filing with the SEC that the new job cuts will reduce the high end of its expense guidance for the year by almost US$3 billion.

The company bloated during the COVID era from about 4,800 employees to about 87,000 before it started firing people left, right, and center as its revenue plummets in 2022.

“We should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years.”

Last year, the CEO declared the year a time of efficiency even though he continued to throw billions that its metaverse project which seems to have been shoved aside as it has gotten a negative reception from the general public.

In his attempt to save cost which ultimately led to the layoff of 13% of the company’s workforce last year, Zuckerberg has focused on reducing layers of management by making it known to employees in January that he doesn’t think they want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the actual work.

In his memo announcing more layoffs, Zuckerberg said that it no longer makes sense for managers to have only “a few” direct reports and confirmed that many of them will be asked to become individual contributors throughout the company.

“A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster,” he wrote. “People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling.”

He also made it known that the company will continue to cancel low-priority projects while acknowledging that he had underestimated the indirect costs of running those low-priority projects.

The Meta boss also stated that there might be a potential return of junior engineers back to the office and spend at least three days every week.

“This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in the person and that those relationships help us work more effectively,” he wrote.

Even though the current state of Meta’s economy isn’t good at all, the company isn’t entirely shelving the metaverse project even though it isn’t really the most popular among the general public.

Remember that the company rebranded itself from Facebook t Meta in order to pursue the metaverse and virtual reality aspirations in the hope that the company could catch more audience in the VR market and dominate it the same as the smartphone market is already dominated by Google and Apple respectively.

The company is also reportedly working on building its own AI system to join the trendy generative AI quest that is swirling across the internet.