meta layoffs Archives - Exhibit Tech

Only a few months back in November 2022, Meta sacked roughly 11,000 employees from its global workforce. Firing 13 per cent of its global workforce made Meta the company to fire the most employees in 2022 followed by Twitter which sacked 5,000 of its workforce. Now, nearly just four months after the massive layoffs, Meta is gearing up to lay off thousands of employees soon.

Meta layoffs

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram is planning to lay off thousands of its employees soon as reported by The Washington Post. The new set of layoffs is said to disproportionately impact non-engineering roles. it is also reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is currently deputising lawyers, financial experts, top executives and human resources employees to draw up plans to deflate the hierarchy within the company. Back in November 2022, Meta cited that overhiring and poor macroeconomic conditions were the reason behind the mass layoff. It will be interesting to see what reason is cited by the tech giant for the fresh round of layoffs.

It is expected that Meta will be citing a similar reason for the layoffs and additional mitigating costs amid falling revenue will also be one of the reasons for the layoffs. The reports reveal furthermore that Meta is considering rather traditional spending cuts by slashing some projects. These cuts will be targeted at divisions across the company and will happen gradually.

As per reports, the development about the upcoming layoffs comes days after it was reported that the company purposely gave ‘subpar ratings’ to thousands of employees during their performance review. On the other hand, Meta seems to be desperately trying to increase revenues with its verified subscription plans.

It looks like the tech industry cannot seem to catch a break. It was only a few days back when reports about Twitter laying a big chunk of its global employees after Elon Musk took command of the platform. The layoffs have also affected Twitter employees based in India. Now, it looks like Facebook-parent Meta is also gearing up to scale down on its workforce. As per reports doing the rounds on the internet, Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs as early as this week!

Meta mass layoffs

Wall Street Journal was one of the first portals to report on this shocking development. As of September 2022, Meta reported a total of over 87,000 employees worldwide across multiple platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and messaging platform WhatsApp. This number will witness a considerable nosedive after the mass layoffs start happening. As per reports, company officials have already notified employees to cancel any nonessential travel from the start of this week.

This planned layoff would mark the first-ever downscale by Meta in the company’s 18-year history. The layoffs in percentage are considerably smaller than the job cuts at Twitter inc. which Thanos snapped almost half of its workforce. However, this could be the largest layoff to date in a major tech corporation. WSJ reached out to Meta for a comment but a spokesperson declined to do so.

The layoff news comes just two weeks after Meta reported that its profits halved to $4.4 billion in the third quarter of 2022. This is a significant drop from $9.2 billion a year earlier. Meta has also revealed that its revenue slipped to US 27.7 billion from USD 29 billion a year earlier. Meta shares at USD 105 now cost less than a third of what they did at the start of the year. The tech corporation is undoubtedly in a difficult position right now facing issues like stagnating user numbers and cuts in advertising budgets. It will be interesting to see whether Meta’s comeback is stronger than its setback!