Meta layoffs hit India, affecting senior leadership and other employees

As Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, went through a phase of downsizing globally, many Indian employees found themselves facing job cuts. Members of the senior leadership teams here in India, such as Avinash Pant, director of marketing for India, and Saket Jha Saurabh, director of media partnerships, were among those affected.

Alongside layoffs, the internet giants have also been seeing a series of resignations from the leadership team. Manish Chopra, who served as the director and head of Meta's partnership initiatives in India, announced his departure earlier this month after spending four and a half years at the company. This adds to the succession of notable exits from Meta India, following the exits of Ajit Mohan, the former India head, and Rajiv Aggarwal, the public policy head, both of whom left the organization towards the end of the previous year.

A significant number of employees across functions in the company have been given the pink slip.

Numerous employees of the company took to their social network pages to share their layoff story as #metalayoffs trended across platforms.

A lot of them said they were sent on a ‘forced break’.

Kate Hayes, head of policy communications - contentiIntegrity and responsible innovation, Asia Pacific at Meta said in her LinkedIn post, “After 3 incredible years, unfortunately I was impacted by the #metalayoffs. This is the first time I've been without a job since I was 15 years old, and whilst it's a discombobulating feeling, I'm going to take this forced break as a gift.”

The recent Meta layoffs was not the first one though. Previously, the company had already implemented a round of layoffs, which affected thousands of employees. The decision to downsize again as per the company is in line with Meta's ongoing efforts to adapt to changing market conditions and streamline its operations.

In an excerpt from a blogpost earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg had said, “Over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates. With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team. We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted. We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details. Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.”

The blogpost also said that after restructuring, the company plans to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group.