Meta, Facebook parent company, this week, announced that it will lay off more than 11,000 of its employees.
Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in a message to his employees on Wednesday said the layoffs will reduce the company’s workforce by about 13 per cent.
He noted that the company also plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter.
“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13 per cent and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1,” Mr Zuckerberg said.
I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
Mr Zuckerberg said the development follows his decision to “significantly increase our investments” at the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately, he added, this did not play out the way he expected.
“Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he noted.
On the need to become more capital efficient, Mr Zuckerberg said the company has shifted resources onto a smaller number of high-priority growth areas such as its AI discovery engine, ads and business platforms, and its long-term vision for the metaverse.
“We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint. We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go,” he said.
