Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has confirmed that the company is cutting off 13% of its staff, or over 11,000 employees worldwide, confirming earlier this week’s rumors of significant staff reductions.
Zuckerberg said in a message to Meta workers earlier today: “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history.”
The CEO discussed additional measures to make the company smaller and more effective in addition to the 11,000+ layoffs, such as extending the hiring freeze through the first quarter of its fiscal financial year and reducing discretionary spending.
The department affected by the change most significantly is anticipated to be Meta’s hiring section.
“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 for those impacted.” Zuckerberg said.
Over the past 12 months, Meta’s value has decreased by over half a trillion dollars.
In the third quarter, net income decreased by 52% to $4.4 billion from analysts’ expectations of $5 billion, while revenue decreased by 4% to $27.71 billion.
Investors have watched the social media behemoth’s continued billion-dollar investments in Reality Labs, the division in charge of its metaverse ambitions, with anxiety. As a result, there have been speculations of significant job losses.
As a result of the pandemic’s impact on the tech industry not lasting as long as he had anticipated, Zuckerberg is shouldering a large portion of the responsibility for the decision.
“At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online, and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments,” he wrote.
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