Meta's Year of Efficiency (2022-2023)
After Meta's stock collapsed in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 a 'year of efficiency.' The company laid off about 21,000 people across several waves over eight months while remaining profitable.
Meta's stock rebounded sharply as costs fell and revenue recovered, and the efficiency framing became a template for the industry.
Meta established repeated, incremental layoffs at a profitable major tech firm as a normal tool of cost control, often tied to AI investment.
Salesforce's pattern closely resembles Meta's: a profitable company cutting in waves, with AI-driven efficiency as the stated rationale, though at a smaller scale relative to its workforce.
