10,000 more employees in Facebook parent Meta set to lose their jobs

In November 2022, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, had announced that it was laying off 11,000 workers as part of its cost-cutting strategy.

Four months after firing 11,000 employees, Facebook-parent Meta Platforms announced its second round of layoffs where 10,000 employees are set to lose their jobs.

"We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven't yet hired," Reuters quoted Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg as saying in a message to staff.

In November 2022, Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, had announced that it was laying off 11,000 workers as part of its cost-cutting strategy.

In a letter to employees, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the company, said the company has decided to reduce the size of the team by about 13 per cent and letting 11,000 employees go.

"We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1. 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," he said in the letter.

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, he said.

"I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that," he added.

The company, which has over 87,000 employees, has been a powerhouse company for years despite coming under criticism over data privacy issues and toxic content. In 2021, Meta was valued at $1 trillion, but the year 2022 has not been a great year due to a global economic slowdown and a decline in digital advertising, which is the main source of its revenue, according to a report in The New York Times.

Many tech companies including Apple, Intel, Amazon, Stripe and Snap have opted for layoffs or freezing new hirings in the last six months due to the looming recession.