Meta has laid off more than 11,000 employees in its first-ever mass layoff, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm will lay off about 13 percent of its workforce. Mark Zuckerberg , CEO of Meta , released a statement this morning confirming that the company is laying off more than 11,000 people. The layoffs, which affect about 13% of Meta’s workforce, were the first mass layoffs in the firm’s 18-year history. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Zuckerberg said in a statement, “I want to take responsibility for these actions and how we got here. Everyone suffers, but I sincerely sympathize with those directly affected. The Reality Labs department, which was responsible for Meta’s recent move to VR/AR projects, is just one of many affected by the layoffs. Less than a week before Meta’s layoff, Twitter, the social media competitor recently bought by the world’s richest man, Ilon Musk, laid off about half of its roughly 7,500 employees.Since the summer, tech firms of all sizes have been cutting their workforces due to rising costs and expectations of a recession next year. The number of people laid off at Meta this year is higher than at any other IT company. The company is facing its first revenue loss since it went public a decade ago in July, and its quarterly profit more than halved from the previous month.
After Zuckerberg’s controversial decision to invest billions in creating an immersive online world driven by virtual reality, nicknamed “meta-universe,” Meta, a trillion-dollar firm in 2021, saw its value plummet to below that of Home Depot in 2022.
Meta investors are pushing the business to cut funding to Reality Labs, the department responsible for all Metaverse efforts. Reality Labs lost $3.7 billion last quarter, and the company lost $10.2 billion for all of 2021. Meta also predicted that Reality Labs’ losses would “significantly” increase in the coming year during the company’s latest earnings announcement. Quest’s Meta virtual outfit allows users to enter an immersive realm called Horizon Worlds, which has been criticized for its poor graphics and flaws so severe that even Meta employees don’t use it.
In addition, Meta’s core ad targeting business has suffered because of Apple’s new privacy settings for iOS devices. In addition, as a result of the uncertain economic situation, digital advertisers have cut back, and Instagram users, especially teens and young adults, have flocked to TikTok.
Meta’s senior management had been hinting for months at impending layoffs. The corporation stopped hiring new employees in September. Meta will “manage people who don’t succeed,” Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in his weekly presentation, according to Bloomberg.At a company-wide Q&A earlier this year, Zuckerberg reportedly said: “There are actually a number of people at the firm that shouldn’t be here. And I suppose some of you could just say this is not the place for you, because I’ve raised the standards and set more aggressive goals, and I’m just warming up the atmosphere a little bit. And I have no problem with people choosing for themselves.
Discussing the company’s future at last month’s earnings report, Zuckerberg indicated that resources would be allocated to “a limited number of high-priority development areas.” He clarified, “Overall, we expect to be the same size or slightly smaller by the end of 2023 than we are today.”