New Delhi: Facebook parent Meta is slashing another 10,000 jobs and will not fill 5,000 open positions as the social media pioneer cuts costs. The company said Tuesday it will reduce the size of its recruiting team and make further cuts in its tech groups in late April, and then its business groups in late May.

This will be tough and there’s no way around that, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success.

The Menlo Park, California, company has invested billions of dollars to realign its focus on the metaverse.

In February it posted lower fourth-quarter profit and revenue, hurt by a downturn in the online advertising market and competition from rivals such as TikTok.

The company announced 11,000 job cuts in November. As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long-term vision, said Zuckerberg.

Meta cut roughly 11,000 jobs, or about 13 percent of its employees, last year. The reductions this year are expected to reach the same proportion of those who remain, the people said, though the final count of the cumulative cuts expected over the second quarter isn’t yet clear.

A few days back, The Wall Street Journal reported that the “Facebook parent Meta Platforms is planning additional layoffs to be announced in multiple rounds over the coming months that in total would be roughly the same magnitude as the 13 percent cut to its workforce last year.”

“The new cuts, the first wave of which is expected to be announced next week, are likely to hit non-engineering roles especially hard, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is also expected to shut down some projects and teams in conjunction with these cuts,” the report added.

Technology companies including Amazon.com, Microsoft and others have cut thousands of jobs this year and last as profits retreat from pandemic-induced highs. Since 2022, layoff tallies have reached nearly 300,000 workers, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that is tracking job cuts in the industry.