Social media giant Meta is to cut up to 350 jobs from its Irish workforce as part of the company’s latest round of global job losses that will see it shed thousands of roles worldwide.
Sources confirmed the figures, which account for about 20 per cent of the company’s Irish-based workforce. A spokeswoman for Meta did not comment on specific figures.
The number is significantly higher than the initial 10 per cent expected, which would have seen numbers reduced by 180. The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment has been informed of the cuts.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, began notifying workers around the world about the lay-offs earlier today, beginning with staff in its Asian hub in Singapore. Employees there were informed at 4am local time. European and US-based staff are receiving word early in their time zones.
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The company is reducing staff numbers globally by 10 per cent – about 8,000 jobs – in a bid to offset its heavy investment in artificial intelligence and to boost efficiency.
The workforce in Ireland has already been reduced by 40 per cent since its post-Covid peak of about 3,000 staff to 1,800 people across multiple sites, including Meta’s international headquarters in Dublin, a data centre in Co Meath and Reality Labs in Cork, according to an analysis by The Irish Times.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on Wednesday afternoon that the State will “do everything we possibly can to help” those impacted by the layoffs.
“We will work through the State agencies, Enterprise Ireland, IDA, Department of Social Protection and others to make sure they will have a good idea of potential alternative jobs in that sector, that may be available for those workers and any other supports we can give those workers in terms of dealing with the announcement” he said.
On the trend of big name global tech sector companies shedding jobs, Martin said “there is certainly an AI trend beginning, but it’s unclear”.
“There is an investment outlay by some of these companies and they are cutting costs to fund the outlay. And AI itself is replacing certain types of jobs so therefore we have to work to create newer types of jobs such as we are creating here in the life sciences sector,” Martin said.
He was speaking at Medtronic in Galway where the US medical devices multinational announced the establishment of its new European software development hub which will employ 85 people at its Parkmore facility.
“We’ll be investing very strongly in skills education in universities on the AI question so that our skill level will be such we can take higher quality jobs into the future. It’s all about making sure we are competitive in terms of jobs of the future and trying to support existing jobs and helping people to readjust,” Martin said.
Labour enterprise spokesman George Lawlor has called on the Government to develop a strategy to protect tech jobs.
“This is a deeply worrying and stressful time for anyone employed by Meta,” he said. “Minister Burke must work with Meta to ensure fairness is applied and to protect jobs and livelihoods where possible. We need to see a comprehensive plan in place for the State to help secure jobs and protect worker’s incomes in the event their employer and sector faces a downturn or a change in business model.”
The latest round of cuts is the most significant since Meta embarked on its “year of efficiency” in 2022, restructuring the company and announcing thousands of job cuts. That translated to almost 350 job losses in Meta Ireland at the time, with a further 500 announced by May 2023.
Last year, the company cut a number of jobs at its Irish operations as part of a round of “performance-related” cutbacks globally that it expected to trim about 5 per cent of its staff numbers.
This latest round of lay-offs is expected to impact the engineering and product teams, but further reductions in headcount could come later in the year, sources said.
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On Monday, Meta informed staff that some 7,000 workers have also been reassigned to newly formed teams that are focused on AI initiatives, including products and agents. The company, which has committed well in excess of $100 billion to AI capital expenditures this year, had just under 80,000 employees at the end of March, ahead of the reassignments and lay-offs.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority, committing all resources to keeping pace with rivals such as Google and OpenAI.
Meta’s aggressive spending on AI has caused concern among investors, who worry that the company’s investment may not ultimately pay off. While Meta has framed the lay-offs as an opportunity to “offset” the cost of some of its big AI investments, analysts at Evercore estimate the cuts will generate only about $3 billion in savings. – Additional reporting: Bloomberg
