Facebook parent Meta to begin large-scale layoffs this week: Report
By Team Newsable | First Published Nov 7, 2022, 9:27 AM ISTMeta has been struggling financially for months and has been cutting costs more and more. This year, Meta shares have fallen 73 per cent, to their lowest level since early 2016, and the Silicon Valley behemoth is now the worst performer in the S&P 500 in 2022.
The parent company of social media platform Facebook, Meta, plans to begin large-scale layoffs this week, affecting thousands of employees, according to the media report, citing sources. There is no clarity on how many people will be laid off or from which department.
Meta reported more than 87,000 employees worldwide across its various platforms as of September, a 28 per cent increase from the previous year. In June, the social media company cut plans to hire engineers, by at least 30 per cent, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning employees to brace themselves for an economic downturn. According to the report, company officials have already instructed employees to cancel all non-essential travel beginning this week.
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In his announcement of Meta's disappointing third-quarter results, Mark Zuckerberg said that the company's workforce would not be increased by the end of 2023 and might even decrease slightly.
"In 2023, we will concentrate our investments on a small number of high-growth areas. This means while some teams will grow significantly, the majority of other teams will remain flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as roughly the same size or even slightly smaller than we are now," Zuckerberg said during the most recent earnings call in late October.
In this context, the planned job cuts would be the first significant reductions in the social media behemoth's 18-year history. Furthermore, it is smaller in percentage terms than Elon Musk's Twitter layoffs last week, which affected roughly half of the company's employees.
Meta has been struggling financially for months and has been cutting costs more and more. This year, Meta shares have fallen 73 per cent, to their lowest level since early 2016, and the Silicon Valley behemoth is now the worst performer in the S&P 500 in 2022.
Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger, has invested heavily in the metaverse, an immersive virtual world, just as global economies have slowed and inflation has surged.
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