According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta is planning major layoffs that could affect “thousands” of workers. The layoffs could begin as soon as Wednesday, sources familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal. The Facebook and Instagram parent reported more than 87,000 employees in its earnings report at the end of September, and the “massive” layoffs are expected to cut a sizable chunk of the workforce.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the layoffs hit Meta even harder than Twitter’s massive layoffs, which affected half of the company’s 7,500 employees.
In June, Meta’s chief product officer Chris Cox warned employees that “this is a tough time” and noted that employees must “execute perfectly in an environment of slowing growth.” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg started taking shots at employees around the same time, saying in an internal Q&A that “there are probably a bunch of people in the company who shouldn’t be here.” Zuckerberg later imposed a hiring freeze in September and warned that the company could lay off employees in the near future.
Meta declined to comment, but Zuckerberg’s statements during the company’s earnings call last month have hinted at it. In 2023, we will focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas,” Zuckerberg said. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most others will remain flat or shrink in the year ahead. Overall, we expect to end 2023 at roughly the same size, or even slightly smaller than the organization is today.”
Despite Zuckerberg saying Facebook has more active users than ever, investors remain concerned about the company’s costly bets on the meta-universe. meta’s virtual reality unit lost $3.7 billion this past quarter and a total of $9.4 billion this year, while the company’s stock is trading at its lowest price since 2016.
