Meta is laying off more than 11,000 employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a declaration this morning. The cuts, amounting to around 13% of Meta’s staff, mark the first time the world’s largest social media company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, has laid off people on a large scale in its 18 years. of history.
“I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in the statement. “I know this is difficult for everyone, and I am especially sorry for those affected.”
The cuts affect all divisions of the company, including Reality Labs, the department in charge of Meta’s recent turn toward virtual and augmented reality projects.
The Meta layoffs come less than a week after social media rival Twitter, which was recently bought by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, laid off about half of its roughly 7,500 employees. Tech companies both large and small have been laying off employees since the summer amid rising inflation and fears of a recession next year. The Meta layoffs are the biggest tech layoffs so far this year.
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In July, the company’s revenue refused for the first time since it went public a decade ago, and last month, its quarterly earnings shrunken by more than half.
Meta, which was a trillion dollar company in 2021, is now worth less than Home Depot after its shares plunged more than 70% in 2022, more than a year after a controversial move by Zuckerberg to invest billions of dollars in building an immersive virtual reality-powered online world called the “metaverse.” “.
Meta investors have been calling on the company to cut spending on Reality Labs, the division of the company responsible for its metaverse projects. reality labs lost $3.7 billion in the last quarter and $10.2 billion in 2021. And on Meta’s latest earnings call, the company said Reality Labs’ losses would grow “significantly” next year.
Horizon Worlds, Meta’s own immersive universe accessible through the company’s Quest VR headset, has been criticized for poor graphics and bugs so bad that even Meta’s own employees are barely using it.
At the same time, Meta’s core business of targeting ads has taken a hit: It can no longer track users on iPhones and iPads as well as it used to thanks to privacy changes implemented by Apple. Also, teens and young adults, who have ever used Instagram, are flocking to TikTokand digital advertisers have reduced their expenses thanks to an uncertain economic climate.
For months, Meta’s top bosses have hinted that layoffs were looming. In September, the company froze hiring. During a weekly speech to employees, Zuckerberg said Meta would “handle people who aren’t succeeding,” Bloomberg said. reported.
“Realistically, there are probably a lot of people in the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg. reportedly he told employees at a company-wide question-and-answer session earlier this year. “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive targets, and just turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might say that this place is not for you. And that self-selection is fine with me.”
In the company’s earnings call last month, Zuckerberg saying that the company would focus its investments on a “small number of high-priority growth areas.” He added: “Taken together, we expect to end 2023 as an organization about the same size or even slightly smaller than we are today.”
