Meta – owner of Facebook – plans to lay off around 10,000 employees and get rid of 5,000 additional open roles in round of cuts in the past six months.

The goal, per a statement, is to seek to lower expenses and improve efficiency.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement Tuesday that Facebook wants to remove multiple layers of management.

The news comes after the social-networking platform laid off 11,000 people in November.

“My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead,” Zuckerberg wrote.

The job cuts are “in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long-term vision.”

Meta said it now expects full-year 2023 total expenses to be in the range of $86 billion-$92 billion, lowered from $89 billion-$95 billion previously, it disclosed in an SEC filing.

Meta employees had been bracing for more layoffs in recent weeks. Zuckerberg has been outspoken about the need to better prioritize projects and investments, calling 2023 the “year of efficiency” on a recent earnings call and hinting at additional job cuts. Earlier this year, Meta started an internal restructuring process known as a “flattening,” eliminating some middle managers and asking others to return to individual contributor roles instead of overseeing other employees.

The company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has seen a slowdown in advertising revenue, leading to its first-ever annual sales decline in 2022. Zuckerberg has shifted Meta’s focus and investment in the past year to virtual reality technology and the so-called metaverse, which he envisions as the next major computing platform.

Meta’s employee ranks expanded dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic as demand for the company’s digital services increased and Zuckerberg leaned into the moment. The social media giant’s headcount grew 30% in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and then 23% in 2021. By the time Meta starting eliminating jobs last November, the company had more than 87,000 employees.