• Several high-ranking and tenured Meta employees said in recent weeks they're leaving the company.
  • Mark Zuckerberg's "flattening" of company management is ongoing as further layoffs approach.
  • The head of Meta's Austin office is among the exits. Some think the office may shrink further.

Meta employees are seeing their internal Workplace platform flooded with goodbye posts as they brace for yet another round of layoffs and more changes at the company.

In recent weeks, several upper management and vice president-level employees at Meta, previously known as Facebook, have announced their departures, two people familiar with the company said. The exit posts, also known as "badge" posts, feel "constant," one of the people said. 

All of the people leaving the company are part of Meta's business divisions, an area of the company that will see about 6,000 people laid off next week as it becomes the last division to experience the company's process this year of staggered layoffs. This round of layoffs is expected to be even more extensive than the "bloodbath" that hit the company's tech and engineering departments last month, both of the people familiar said. 

Most of the executive exits are effectively "quiet layoffs," the people added, saying people at the VP level are often among those at the company who have been told directly if their job was being eliminated as part of the ongoing reorganization and allowed to find new work or leave prior to layoffs. Most rank-and-file employees are not given such an option. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously dubbed 2023 his "Year of Efficiency" and said he wanted to "flatten" the company's reporting structure, removing layers of management while reigning in costs.  

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment.

This week already William Platt-Higgins, who has been with Meta for over a decade, revealed he's leaving the company next month. Platt-Higgins started at Meta in 2012 as a vice president of global client partnerships and kept that title as his purview expanded to include government and policy and non-profit organizations at the company.

Prior to the exit of Platt-Higgins, three other VPs said they were leaving the company. Sarah O'Brien is leaving after four years of leading executive and product communications at the company. Two other executives, each with over a decade at the company, are also out. Gigi Melrose, VP of growth for Meta's small business group is leaving after 12 years. She only took on the VP role last year after being promoted from the director level. 

And Katherine Shappley, VP of Meta's commerce business group, is leaving at the end of this month after 13 years. Melrose and Shappley were both based out of Meta's office in Austin, with Shappley acting as the head of the Austin office in addition to her other work. 

One of the people familiar said internally there has recently been talk that Austin will be the next Meta office to further shrink its footprint, similar to what happened last month at the company's office in London. Although still open, the entirety of Instagram staff in the UK office were laid off or are being moved back to work in the US, including Instagram head Adam Mosseri. Much Meta office space in the UK is now being sublet. 

Already, Meta has halted plans for expanding office space in Austin and a contractor workforce who worked out of current office space has been shrinking since last year. The company has said it intends to "rationalize" its real estate footprint this year, something that will cost it approximately $3 billion to accomplish, mainly due to the cost of exiting early leases for commercial office space. 

Are you a Meta employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.