RICK KELLEY, THE head of Facebook’s parent company Meta in Ireland, has announced he is stepping down.

Kelley took over as Meta Ireland chief less than a year ago.

In a Facebook post, he said: “After 14 years, I have made the difficult decision to leave Meta and I’ll be wrapping up in the next couple of months.

“My time at Meta, here in Dublin, has been the greatest of my career,” the Boston native wrote. “When I started, we had just celebrated having 300M monthly users, we now have over 3 billion. We made as much revenue in a year as we now do in about two days. To say this is a different company today vs June 2009 is an understatement.

“I’ve had a front-row seat to watch the seismic evolution and innovation of the online advertising industry. In addition, over the past year+, I had the added responsibility of Head of Meta Ireland, which for a Boston boy named “Kelley” was a tremendous privilege and honor.”

Before he became head of Meta Ireland, Kelley was the company’s Vice President of Gaming and App Monetisation Solutions, a role he retained when he took the Dublin job.

Before that, he was Facebook’s Director of Sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He was also previously a commercial director in Yahoo.

His post continued: “This was not an easy decision, but over the holidays, when contemplating ‘what’s next’ for my career, I was most excited by the prospect of taking a break. In every step of my career, I’ve given my full energy and it’s time to recharge my batteries.

“Maybe I’ll finally find the time to lower my golf handicap, something I’ve been envisioning for far too long.

“I am incredibly grateful for taking the chance of moving to Ireland for this gig and for my wife Kim Kelley who has been as supportive of a partner as one could ask for. This ‘job’ has changed my life in so many ways, and for that, I will always click the ‘like’ button.”

Meta has announced thousands of job cuts, including hundreds in Ireland, in recent months as the tech sector slows down.

It reportedly plans to push some leaders into lower-level roles without direct reports, flattening the layers of management between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company’s interns.

It has also spent billions on developing the Metaverse, a proposed immersive online world for people to work and socialise in that is usually reached using virtual reality headsets. However, the project does not yet exist in any substantial form, beyond a handful of specific and limited apps.