Facebook Owner Meta Fires Over 11,000 Employees In Biggest Layoff In Its History

Guwahati: Meta Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg announced that over 11,000 employees would be let go in the first significant round of layoffs in the history of the social media behemoth. According to a statement on Wednesday, the layoffs represent 13% of Meta’s whole workforce.

Additionally, the business will prolong its hiring ban until the first quarter. In the statement sent to Meta employees and posted on the company’s website, Zuckerberg wrote, “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.”

Meta further said that its recruiting team will be affected disproportionately as reductions take place across the company and its business teams will be restructured “more substantially”. The company will also consider other cost cutting measures in the coming months and review its spending on infrastructure and real estate, added the statement.

Meta’s stock fell more than 71% this year after multiple quarters of dismal earnings and a decline in revenue, and the firm is now taking steps to reduce costs. The firm has undergone several radical restructurings since the founding of Facebook in 2004.

Prior to the start of trading in New York on Wednesday, shares increased by around 3.5%.

In the statement, Zuckerberg said that he had anticipated that the increase in online sales and traffic that has occurred since the Covid-19 ban began would last indefinitely.

“However, the financial downturn, heightened competition, and loss of ad signal have resulted in our revenue being significantly lower than anticipated. I made a mistake,” he acknowledged.

It should be noted that Meta has joined a number of businesses, including Salesforce Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc. that have recently announced job layoffs and a pause in hiring.

In recent months, Twitter has reduced its employment by about 50% after billionaire Elon Musk took control of the microblogging service.

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.