Facebook’s Parent To Start Widespread Layoffs

GLOBAL – Sources revealed that after lacklustre earnings and a fall in revenue, Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms intends to let go a huge number of employees in a bid to slash costs, reported Bloomberg on Wednesday morning (9 November, SGT).

Staff who will be included in the job cuts will be informed beginning Wednesday morning, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told executives on Tuesday to prepare them for the mass layoffs

Zuckerberg warned personnel in September that they plan to reduce expenses and restructure teams. Meta Platforms, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, had already initiated a recruitment freeze, and Zuckerberg revealed that they expect a smaller headcount next year compared to 2022.

As of the end of September, the group employed a total of more than 87,000 people across the globe, and the retrenchment is expected to impact around 10 percent of that figure. The job cuts, part of the first major budget cut since Facebook’s inception in 2004, comes amidst an economy on the brink of recession, a significant slowdown in digital advertising revenue, and Zuckerberg’s huge investment in the metaverse.

“This is obviously a different mode than we’re used to operating in. For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time. So we have to adjust,” Zuckerberg told staff in September.

Meta Platforms’ mass layoffs follow retrenchment at Twitter last week, which saw the social media platform let go 50 percent of its manpower following its sale to billionaire Elon Musk.