Facebook Parent Meta Prepares Large-Scale Layoffs This Week

According to a Wall Street Journal story, Meta is preparing significant layoffs that might effect "thousands" of employees.

At the end of September, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram reported having around 87,000 workers, but these "large-scale" layoffs are anticipated to significantly reduce that number. The major job cutbacks at Twitter, which affected roughly half of the company's 7,500 employees, may not have had the same impact on Meta as they did.

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg started to turn up the heat on employees around the same time, saying in an internal Q&A session that "there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here" Zuckerberg later instituted a hiring freeze in September and waged war on employees. In June, Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox warned employees of "serious times," noting that employees must "execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth."

Zuckerberg's comments from the company's earnings call last month was cited by Meta when it declined to comment on the matter. We're planning to concentrate our spending on a select few high priority growth areas in 2023, according to Zuckerberg. Accordingly, certain clubs will experience significant growth over the course of the upcoming year, while the majority of other teams will experience stagnation or decline. Overall, we anticipate that by 2023, we will be either around the same size or even a little bit smaller than we are now.

Investors are nonetheless wary of Facebook's expensive gamble on the metaverse, despite Zuckerberg's claim that the social network has more active users than ever. The virtual reality division of Meta lost $3.7 billion in the most recent quarter and $9.4 billion overall this year, and the stock of the firm is currently trading at its lowest level since 2016.