November 09, (THEWILL) – Facebook Parent company, Meta, on Wednesday, said that it would cut more than 11,000 employees or 13% of its workforce.
“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”, CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a blog post.
The layoffs mark the first such action by Meta, which rebranded last year from Facebook.
Zuckerberg, who said Meta was making headcount reductions across the company, including Reality Labs, the division housing its metaverse projects, disclosed that some teams, including its recruiting team, would be affected more than others.
He said: “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. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”
Zuckerberg, however, said he believed Meta was “deeply underestimated as a company today. We do historically important work. I’m confident that if we work efficiently, we’ll come out of this downturn stronger and more resilient than ever.”
He said in addition to layoffs, the company was also cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023.
“I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of the cost before letting teammates go”, he said.
Meta’s stock was up around 4%, to $100.24, in pre-market trading soon after the announcement.
Meta had 87,314 employees on September 30, 2022, according to its third-quarter earnings report. That represented growth of 28% year-over-year, the report said.
Zuckerberg, on Wednesday, said that laid-off staff had lost access to most Meta systems “given the amount of access to sensitive information”, but that they would still have access to their emails “so everyone can say farewell.”
Zuckerberg had hinted in recent months that downsizing was coming. The first hint came in late April when he told investors on a quarterly earnings call that more attrition would make Meta “a better company.” A few days later, the company imposed a broad hiring freeze.
