Meta, Facebook’s Parent Company, Plans To Lay Off More Than 11,000 Workers.

On Wednesday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said that it would let go of more than 11,000 of its workers.

The layoffs will result in a 13% reduction in employment at Meta, according to Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, in a message to his staff on Wednesday. He said the business also intended to reduce discretionary spending and keep its employment ban in place through the first quarter.

“Today I’m going to talk about some of the hardest modifications we’ve ever undertaken for Meta. I’ve made the decision to let more than 11,000 of our excellent workers go in order to lower the size of our workforce by roughly 13%. By reducing discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1, we are also taking a number of further initiatives to become a smaller and more effective organization, Mr. Zuckerberg added.
“I want to accept responsibility for these choices and how we arrived here. I apologize in particular to those who are impacted because I realize this is difficult for everyone.

According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the development happened as a result of his choice to “substantially raise our investments” at the beginning of the pandemic. Sadly, he continued, and things did not turn out the way he had expected.

“Online sales have not only resumed their previous patterns, but our revenue has been substantially lower than I had anticipated due to the financial slump, increasing competition, and ad signal loss. I made a mistake here, and I accept responsibility for it,” he said.

Regarding the requirement for greater capital efficiency, Mr. Zuckerberg stated that the business has shifted resources to a smaller number of high-priority development areas, such as its AI discovery engine, advertising and commercial platforms, and its long-term ambition for the metaverse.

We have reduced expenses across the board, including budgets, benefits, and the size of our real estate portfolio. Teams are being reorganized to improve productivity. But these steps won’t be enough to bring our costs into line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also had to make the difficult choice to fire certain employees,” he said.
According to him, affected employees in the US would receive a total of 16 weeks of severance compensation, plus two more weeks for each year of service, with no cap, in addition to any unused paid time off. Employees will receive reimbursement for their healthcare costs for six months, and those who were impacted will receive their vesting on November 15. Additionally, they will receive three months of career support from a third-party vendor, including early access to unreleased job leads and immigration assistance for people on visas.

Support

Mr. Zuckerberg stated that support will be similar outside of the US, and the company will shortly follow up with distinct procedures that take into account regional employment rules.

Formerly known as Facebook, the business changed its name to emphasize the metaverse, a virtual reality environment that is still in the early stages of development. Investors are still unconvinced by its new strategy, and they are also worried about Meta’s mounting prices and expenses.

TikTok’s competition is also becoming a bigger threat to the business as younger users prefer it to Instagram, which Meta also controls.

As of the third quarter of 2022, Meta reported having 87,314 employees, a 28% rise from the previous year.

The business reported a drop in second-quarter revenue and a halving of earnings from the previous year last month.
According to CNN, Meta’s market worth, which was formerly valued at over $1 trillion, has recently dropped to about $250 billion.

The new development occurs just a week after Twitter Inc. reduced its personnel by half as advertisers withdrew their support due to concerns over content moderation.