Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, is planning a second round of layoffs. A Bloomberg report claimed that Meta will fire thousands of employees earlier this week.
The report cited people familiar with the matter. Meta has asked directors and vice presidents to make a list of employees who can be let go in this phase of layoffs. In the first round of layoffs last year, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, which was 13% of the entire workforce. For the first time in the company’s 18-year history, such a large number of employees were retrenched. The announcement to remove the employees was made by the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He attributed this to the decline in revenue due to wrong decisions. Mark said, ‘Today I am going to tell about some of the most difficult decisions made in the history of Meta. We have decided to reduce our team size by approximately 13%. Due to this, more than 11 thousand talented employees will lose their jobs. We are taking steps to become a more efficient company by cutting expenses and extending the hiring freeze through Q1. How did the company reach this position? Mark had said, ‘At the beginning of covid, the world rapidly went online and the increase in e-commerce increased the revenue. Many predicted that this increase would be permanent, which would continue even after the end of the pandemic. I thought the same, so I decided to increase my investment. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectation. Not only has online commerce returned to earlier trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, competition, and less advertising have resulted in revenue being lower than I expected. I made this mistake and I take responsibility for it. In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. We have shifted resources to high priority growth areas.
