Meta Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the company will fire over 11,000 employees in the first major round of layoffs in the history of the social media giant. The reductions equal to 13 per cent of the total workforce of Meta, according to a statement on Wednesday.
In addition, the company will also be extending its suspension on hiring through 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 plunged over 71 per cent this year and the company is now taking measures to pare costs following several quarters of disappointing earnings and a downturn in revenue. The retrenchment is the company’s most drastic since Facebook founded in 2004.
On Wednesday, shares rose by about 3.5 per cent in premarket trading before the markets opened in New York.
Zuckerberg mentioned in the statement that he had expected the rise in e-commerce and web traffic from the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown would be permanent.
“But the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than expected. I got this wrong,” he admitted.
It may be noted that Meta has joined a list of companies announcing job cuts and slowdown in hiring in recent weeks alongside Salesforce Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.
Recently, Twitter slashed its workforce by roughly half with billionaire Elon Musk taking over the micro-blogging platform.
