Meta's latest round of layoffs could hit as soon as this week, as the company tries to finalize headcount before Zuckerberg goes on parental leave: Bloomberg

• Meta is planning to axe thousands of employees, per Bloomberg.
• These cuts could happen as soon as this week before CEO Mark Zuckerberg goes on parental leave.

Meta could be laying off thousands of staffers as soon as this week, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Meta staffers who are working on plans for the layoffs hope to get them to CEO Mark Zuckerberg before he goes on parental leave, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are expecting their third child — a girl.

This fresh round of headcount cuts is happening because of Meta's financial targets, and is separate from Zuckerberg's push for "flattening" Meta's organizational structure, Bloomberg's sources — who were granted anonymity to talk about internal matters — said.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on further layoffs, the expected number of job cuts, and which divisions might be impacted. The spokesperson did not immediately respond to Insider's follow-up query on when these reported job cuts might happen.

News of this next round of layoffs comes four months after Meta axed more than 11,000 jobs — or approximately 13% of its workforce at the time. In February, Zuckerberg also declared that 2023 will be a "Year of Efficiency" for the company, and signaled during an earnings call that Meta wasn't done with axing staff.

"We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and when we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end," Zuckerberg said during the call with investors, Insider's Grace Kay reported.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that thousands of workers — around 10% of Meta staff — received annual reviews that indicated they were underperforming, which seemed to signal further job cuts.

Insider also reported in December that Meta was demanding that its managers rank twice as many people this year as low-performing during their annual reviews. This gave the company room to let lower-ranked workers go after the performance review period, Insider reported.

"Our management theme for 2023 is the 'year of efficiency,' and we're focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization," Zuckerberg said at the company's fourth-quarter earnings release, dated February 1.

Before the November layoffs, around 87,314 people worked at Meta, per The New York Times. Meta said in fourth-quarter investors' report that its headcount as of December 31 was 86,482 — but that included a "substantial majority" of the 11,000 people laid off in November.