Today, Wednesday, April 19, 2023, Meta is reportedly conducting another mass round of layoffs.
This round will potentially affect 4,000 jobs across its technical teams, including those working on Facebook, Instagram, Reality Labs, and WhatsApp.
The layoffs follow Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement in February 2023 that the company would eliminate 10,000 more jobs in the upcoming months after eliminating 11,000 in November 2022.
While employees in North America would be affected, the social media giant says some countries won’t be affected.
Consequently, it’s still unclear which African countries will be impacted, although some of the company’s engineers work out of offices in South Africa and Nigeria.
In 2015, Facebook — now known as Meta — established its first African headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, to focus on growing markets in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
In 2020, Meta announced plans for a Nigerian office in Lagos, the country’s commercial and tech hub.
Before this new round of cuts, Zuckerberg stated that the tech departments would be impacted in April, while the business side would be affected in May.
The ongoing layoffs at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for 2023 to be a “year of efficiency.”
What’s more, Meta had about 86,000 employees at the end of 2022.