Meta is about to announce a big wave of layoffs very soon. Several thousand positions can be liquidated.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, will announce massive layoffs in the coming days, The Wall Street Journal reports. The newspaper reports that the company is reportedly planning to lay off “several thousand”employees, which will be announced as early as Wednesday. Meta currently employs over 87,000 people. These layoffs could be the biggest ever by a tech company this year, larger than the layoffs by Twitter on Friday. They may also represent the first major restructuring in Meta’s history.
Meta is expected to announce a big wave of layoffs very soon
Meta declined to comment on the information. A company spokesperson points to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement during the presentation of third-quarter financial results: “In 2023, we will focus our investments on a limited number of our top priority businesses. This means that some teams will grow significantly, while others will remain the same or shrink over the next year,” he said. “Ultimately, we expect to end 2023 with about the same or slightly less payroll than today.”
Several thousand positions can be liquidated
As noted by The Journal, Meta saw significant growth during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, signing on over 27,000 new employees in 2020 and 2021. signed 15,344 additional new employees. While the company has benefited greatly from the pandemic, things have changed in recent months. In July, Menlo Park announced its first-ever revenue decline. The company then blamed tough competition from TikTok and the implementation of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature.
At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg’s bet on the metaverse has so far been unsuccessful, failing to create the expected new revenue opportunities, even though it comes with very high costs. Since the beginning of 2021, Meta has spent $15 billion to democratize virtual and augmented reality, but so far without much success. The company expects to lose even more money on this project in 2023.