Meta, the parent company of the social networks Facebook and Instagram, has started its second round of layoffs in Singapore. It is expected that yet another round of layoffs would come soon, perhaps in May, since Meta said in March this year that jobs would be cut in three batches. In Singapore, the first round of layoffs affected an estimated 50 people in November last year, soon after Meta announced its quest to become a more efficient company.
According to various reports, the second round of worldwide Meta layoffs, which started on Wednesday, targets mainly tech roles.
A number of Meta employees who have technical backgrounds, such as in user experience, software engineering, graphics programming and more posted on social networks in the past two days that their jobs were gone.
The total number of Meta employees in Singapore is not confirmed, but a 2018 report in The Straits Times had put the number at about 1,000, which was a fraction of the 87,000-strong global workforce of Meta.
Yesterday, the Singapore news outlet Mothership cited a user of the Chinese-language social network Xiaohongshu whose post said that she got laid off on Wednesday, even though she was promoted just a month ago to a role that was equivalent to senior software engineer at Meta.
The user also posted the full text of the e-mail notification from Meta that informed each retrenched employee that “Unfortunately, you’ve been included in today’s layoff.” The letter included the usual niceties: “First and foremost, you have our deepest gratitude for all you’ve contributed to Meta. You’ve been an important part of the company’s journey.” The letter also said that a “dedicated site called the Alumni Portal” was set up to assist retrenched employees.
Reporting on the latest round of Meta layoffs, the news agency Reuters cited discussions on Wednesday on an internal company forum, where a poster asked: “You’ve shattered the morale and confidence in leadership of many high performers who work with intensity. Why should we stay at Meta?”
Meta plans to lay off 11,000 employees worldwide, or 13 per cent of the total workforce. This is part of the global layoff trend in the tech world, with Google sacking 12,000 people practically overnight in January 2023, and Microsoft also doing several rounds of layoffs, including the termination of 10,000 jobs in March 2023.