Tech giant Meta has begun letting go of employees, especially in technical roles as part of its second round of layoffs, a company spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. The number of employees affected has yet to be made public.

Employees in India earlier told CNBC-TV18 there were indications that job cuts could begin on april 19 but that they had not received any official communication until Tuesday evening.

While the company has yet to release an official statement, a person in the know has told CNBC-TV18 that employees in India shall also be affected by the second round of layoffs, which the company had announced in March. The person added people in tech roles will among those be laid off and that since senior executives have not been coming to office, an official statement is unlikely to be released.

Meta has yet to respond to CNBC-TV18's queries about the detailed impact of these layoffs.

One of the sacked employees has told CNBC that the latest layoffs also hit product-facing teams and that Meta plans to cut business-facing roles, such as finance, legal and human resources, beginning next month. This person also suggested that tech teams who weren’t impacted by Wednesday’s cuts may be affected by next month's layoffs.

In a LinkedIn post, a user, Teresa Jimenez, Business Program Manager at Facebook, said, “I woke up this morning to the unfortunate news that I was one of the many laid off from Meta today. While I am certainly disappointed, I'm also feeling extremely #grateful for the opportunity to have worked alongside some of the most talented individuals for almost 3 years! (sic)”

Earlier in March, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced that Meta would cut 10,000 more job in the coming months after it laid off 11,000 employees, or 13 percent of the company workforce, in November 2022. The firm also closed about 5,000 additional open roles in its second major round of job cuts in the past six months.

The Facebook parent company has been calling 2023 the “year of efficiency” in an effort to improve its financial performance and achieve longer-term goals. As part of those efforts, Meta is flattening the organisation, canceling lower priority projects and slowing hiring, Zuckerberg said in a statement last month.

First Published:Apr 19, 2023 8:06 PM IST