Meta Fires 11,000 Employees

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

The company announced massive lay offs amid soaring costs and a weak advertising market for the tech company.

Mark Zuckerberg apologized for ‘getting it wrong’ as Meta announced 11,000 jobs were cut.

The job cuts account for around 13 per cent of Meta’s workforce, which are the first in Meta’s 18-year history, follow thousands of layoffs at other major tech companies including Elon Musk-owned Twitter and Microsoft Corp.

The pandemic boom that boosted tech companies and their valuations has turned into a bust this year in the face of decades-high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates.

‘Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,’ Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to employees.

‘I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.’

Zuckerberg stressed on the need to become more capital efficient and said the company would shift resources to ‘high priority growth areas’ such as its AI discovery engine, ads and business platforms, as well as its metaverse project.

Meta said it would pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service as a part of the severance package and all remaining paid time off.

Employees will get cost of healthcare for six months and those impacted will receive their Nov. 15 vesting, according to the company.