New layoffs at Meta will impact 331 workers in the Seattle area and Washington state, according to a filing from the state Employment Security Department.
The company is cutting employees at four facilities located in Seattle and on the Eastside, as well as approximately 97 employees who work remotely in Washington. The layoffs are part of broader reductions in the company’s Reality Labs division, first announced last week, that impacted 1,500 jobs companywide.
The heaviest hit facility is the Reality Labs office in Redmond, followed by the Spring District office in Bellevue, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filing.
Meta’s Horizon OS software engineering team, working out of a Meta office on Dexter Avenue North in Seattle, was the hardest hit single group with 20 jobs cut. Horizon OS is the extended reality operating system developed to power Meta Quest virtual reality and mixed reality headsets.
Layoffs are expected to take effect on March 20.
With about 15,000 employees, Reality Labs currently represents about 19% of Meta’s total global workforce of roughly 78,000.
The company employs thousands of people across multiple offices in the Seattle region, one of its largest engineering hubs outside Menlo Park, Calif. Last October, the Facebook parent laid off more than 100 employees in Washington state as part of a broader round of cuts within its artificial intelligence division.
The Reality Labs cuts come at a time when the company is reportedly shifting priorities away from the metaverse to build next-generation artificial intelligence.
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