After Twitter now Facebook’s parent company Meta is preparing for mass layoffs
According to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, which cited people familiar with the matter, Meta Platforms Inc. intends to begin large-scale layoffs this week, which will affect thousands of employees. An announcement regarding the matter is scheduled to take place as early as Wednesday. Meta did not provide a response regarding the WSJ article. In October, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, issued a forecast predicting a weak holiday quarter and significantly higher costs the following year. This forecast wiped approximately $67 billion off of Meta’s stock market value, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value that has already been lost this year.
A slowdown in global economic growth, competition from TikTok, changes to privacy settings made by Apple, worries about large expenditures on the metaverse, and the ever-present prospect of regulation are all factors that have contributed to Meta’s pessimistic view. Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, has stated that he anticipates it will take approximately ten years for the investments in the metaverse to bear fruit. In the meanwhile, in order to cut costs, he has been forced to put a halt on hiring, shelve initiatives, and restructure teams.
“By 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas.” So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today. During the most recent earnings call, which took place in late October, Zuckerberg stated
In June, the social media corporation said that Facebook would reduce its intentions to hire engineers by at least 30 percent, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned workers to brace themselves for an economic slowdown. Altimeter Capital Management, a shareholder in Meta, had previously written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg stating that the company needed to streamline its operations by eliminating jobs and reducing capital expenditure. The letter also said that investors had lost faith in Meta because the company had decided to spend more and change its focus to the metaverse.
The expansion of the global economy has slowed in recent months due to higher interest rates, rising inflation, and an energy crisis in Europe. As a result, several technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Twitter Inc., and Snap Inc., have reduced the number of jobs they have available and cut back on hiring.