Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is to lay off a sizable chunk of its workforce starting this week. After Twitter last week, it’s the most recent internet juggernaut to fire staff members.
During the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, social media and internet titans experienced unprecedented development. Between total, Meta hired more than 27,000 new workers in 2020 and 2021. They are observing a contraction now that normalcy is starting to return.
Several thousand employees may be impacted, according to the WSJ, which reported on November 6 citing people with knowledge of the situation. This week, Meta is anticipated to provide an official statement, it added.
According to the reports, Meta personnel has already been instructed to postpone any unnecessary trip. As of September, the company reportedly employed approximately 87,000 people.
Meta Is Preparing to Notify Staff of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week https://t.co/EUyQytum7B
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 6, 2022
Meta Loses On Metaverse
Mark Zuckerberg stated that some teams will continue to develop during the company’s third quarter results call in late October. He did, however, disclose that the majority of the company’s teams will “stay flat or shrink over the next year.”
“We expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
For Meta, the earnings announcement was disappointing. It revealed an agonizing 52% decline in net profits, from $9.2 billion last year to $4.4 billion this year. Particularly at Reality Labs, the company’s Metaverse business, expenses skyrocketed. For the time period, the company’s virtual and augmented reality initiatives reported an operational loss of $3.7 billion.
