Meta fights its round of layoffs this Wednesday: approximately 6,000 people. The company counts these in the so-called "Year of Efficiency," in which Meta is only being massively restructured to save money and to flatten the organization structure.

Employees knew the layoffs were coming. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a March blog post that he would cut 10,000 jobs in two rounds of layoffs late in April and late in May, although Meta already cut 11,000 roles last November. Business roles were the target of this week's layoffs, while the April round cut into tech teams. Meta stopped recruiting for about 5,000 open roles. The people number to 21,000 and have cut the firm's global workforce by about a quarter since November, when the company formerly known as Facebook counted around 87,000 employees.

"Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have gone faster," Zuckerberg wrote in his March blog post. "In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects.".

With thousands of team members leaving the company, morale is understandably low at Meta. For months, people have been anxiously waiting to find out if their jobs are safe or not, and if getting laid off isn't stressful enough, for some employees this might mean losing access to healthcare or a work visa.

Meanwhile, during the last year, Meta spent $13.7 billion on Reality Labs, the department for its metaverse developments. Investors have been skeptical of Zuckerberg's insistence that VR and mixed reality will power the next frontier of social connection, but he has doubled-down.

A narrative has developed that we're somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that that's not accurate," Zuckerberg said in a quarterly earnings call last month. "We've been focusing on AI and the metaverse, and we will continue to.".

Of course, AI is deeply embedded in Meta's AR and VR research. AI underpins content moderation, algorithmic social feeds, and other key components of the company's tech. But as AI continues its run as Silicon Valley's favorite buzzword, the company is further embedding the technology in bedded-down pieces of its business.

Just last month alone, Meta launched its very own generative AI coding tool as well as a tool for advertisers called AI Sandbox. For the long term, Meta is working on its own custom chips and a supercomputer to help large-scale AI research. This move could help Meta catch up with Microsoft or Google and their supercomputers.