It’s another 10,000 layoffs at Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, on top of the 11,000 layoffs from November, as their pandemic growth hangover collides with bad bets on Web3 and metaverse boondoggles.

When technology historians look back to determine the moment that started the decline of the once-dominant platform Facebook, they may very well pinpoint the day the company started calling itself Meta. That bizarre name change came in October 2021, more than a year into a pandemic where Facebook saw its profits further skyrocket because people were so stuck online. But downward those profits would go, in part because of unexpectedly high spending on this metaverse business, plus some executive adults leaving the room, and like most tech stocks, their stock price went down pretty much all of 2022.

It was November 2022 when the 11,000 Meta layoffs were announced, puncturing the veneer of the once-unstoppable tech behemoth. Then just last week, we heard thousands more layoffs could be coming on top of those. And sure enough Tuesday morning, the New York Times reports that Meta “planned to lay off about 10,000 employees, or roughly 13 percent of its work force” this week

Mark Zuckerberg announced this in the post above, aping his own phrase “Year of Efficiency” that he brought up in an earnings call last month. The post is otherwise full of McKinsey-esque business-type phrases like “Flatter is faster,” “Leaner is better,” and of course does not acknowledge there is non-existent demand for a metaverse project on which Zuck extravagantly has blown a lot of money thus far.

“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,” Zuckerberg posted. “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.”

The Associated Press adds that Meta additionally “will not fill 5,000 open positions” to trim headcount numbers.

I imagine there is some impact from Apple making privacy changes that hurt Facebook’s ability to target ads. And certainly, TikTok has eaten a good deal of Facebook’s lunch. But both of Meta’s layoff rounds can be attributed to adding a whole lot of staff in the last two years, and likely overinvesting in a product that won't be ready for prime time for a very long time.  So Zuckerberg’s phrase “Year of Efficiency” (which I suspect he will repeat a lot in 2023) remains fairly meaningless without any address of the executive groupthink that led to those bad decisions.

Related: High-Profile Tech Layoffs Continue With Thousands More Expected at Meta This Week [SFist]

Image: MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 28: A pedestrian walks in front of a new logo and the name 'Meta' on the sign in front of Facebook headquarters on October 28, 2021 in Menlo Park, California. A new name and logo were unveiled at Facebook headquarters after a much anticipated name change for the social media platform. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)