When Meta’s CEO announced 11,000 layoffs in 2022, a red-eyed Mark Zuckerberg was conciliatory: “It was one of the hardest calls that I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company,” he said at the time.
Including this first mass layoff, the company has dismissed a total of around 25,000 people across several divisions since 2022, with the most recent round involving a reported 700 layoffs affecting its Reality Labs unit this week. Following the 11,000 laid off in 2022, Meta cut another 10,000 jobs and began a hiring freeze during Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” in 2023.
