According to people familiar with the situation, Meta Platforms Inc. plans to start widespread layoffs this week as part of a recent wave of IT employment cuts following the sector’s explosive expansion during the epidemic. According to the persons acquainted with the situation, hundreds of employees are anticipated to be let off, and an announcement might be made as soon as Wednesday.
At the end of September, Meta stated that it employed more than 87,000 people. According to the people, company managers have already instructed staff to postpone any non-essential travel starting this week.
The upcoming layoffs would be the organization’s first significant headcount cutbacks in its 18-year history.
According to the international daily, the number of Meta employees set to lose their jobs may be the most to date at a significant technological business in a year that has witnessed a retrenchment in the tech sector.
In September, The daily reported that Meta intended to reduce costs by at least 10% in the upcoming months, including some personnel layoffs.
Following many months of more focused workforce reductions during which people were managed out of their positions or had their responsibilities abolished, the layoffs are anticipated to be disclosed this week.
At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg informed staff at a meeting that “really, there are probably a handful of individuals at the firm that shouldn’t be here.”
As life and business migrated further online during the epidemic, Meta, like other internet behemoths, embarked on a recruiting binge. In 2020 and 2021 combined, it hired more than 27,000 workers. In the first nine months of this year, it gained a further 15,344 workers—roughly one-fourth of that during the most recent quarter.
The business’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, recently said that the company will “focus our efforts on a limited number of high-priority development areas,” but a spokeswoman for Meta declined to comment further.
On the company’s third-quarter results call on October 26, he stated, “So that implies certain teams will expand considerably, but the majority of other teams will stay flat or decline over the next year.”
Overall, we anticipate ending 2023 as either around the same size or even a little bit smaller company than we are at the moment, he continued.
This year, the value of Meta’s shares has decreased by more than 70%. The firm has emphasised the deteriorating macroeconomic trends, but according to the international daily, investors have also been alarmed by the company’s expenditures and risks to its core social network business.
Due to TikTok’s fierce competition and Apple Inc.’s demand that users consent to Apple tracking of their devices, the company’s growth in many areas has slowed. This has limited the capacity of social media platforms to target advertisements.
