In Short
- After Twitter, Facebook parent Meta may layoff employees this week.
- Job cuts at Meta were expected for a while after the company’s revenue declined for two straight financial quarters.
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg once told employees that there are a “bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”
By Abhik Sengupta: Facebook parent Meta is reportedly planning to layoff thousands of employees this week. According to The Washington Post, Meta’s job cuts would relatively be smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter last week (about 50 per cent); however, the number of employees expected to lose jobs could be “largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment”. Currently, the company has roughly 87,000 employees.
The report adds that the layoff process at Meta would begin as soon as Wednesday, November 9. A spokesperson told the publication that the company would focus on “investments on a small number of high priority growth areas” without confirming the firings. Senior managers have also reportedly told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week.
Job cuts at Meta were expected for a while after the company’s revenue declined for two straight financial quarters. Even CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in a meeting in August that there are a “bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.” At the meeting, Zuckerberg also noted that he is “okay” if workers think they don’t belong at Meta.
Earlier in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta might cut expenses by at least 10 per cent through job reductions. The company blamed macroeconomic situations for the fall in revenue. Meta, like most other tech giants, grew significantly during the peak COVID lockdown and it even added 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021 combined. Now, due to rising inflation, challenges from TikTok and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), and the Russia-Ukraine war, it is feeling the heat.
The company remains bullish about its growth, especially its Metaverse project, though its developer, Reality Labs, is failing to make profits. Zuckerberg addressed concerns during his last earnings call. “I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment,” Zuckerberg said. He added, “People are going to look back on decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here”.
If Meta lays off thousands of employees, the move will echo Twitter’s decision to fire almost half of its workforce. Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk already fired top executives on day 1 of the takeover. Days later, he laid off roughly 3500 people, including employees at the Twitter India office.
