Meta fires over 11,000 employees

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has sacked over 11,000 employees. This is coming few days after Vanguard had reported how Meta had planned to layoff its staff this week, over poor performance. The parent company of Facebook had on Monday expressed disappoint over the performance of its staff.

As of September 30, Meta had about 87,000 employees worldwide across its different platforms, which include social media sites Facebook and Instagram as well as messaging platform Whatsapp. In his announcement of Meta’s disappointing third quarter results, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm’s staff would not increase by the end of 2023, and might decrease slightly.

The latest plans from Meta follow recent announcements by other tech firms to freeze hiring or cut their workforce as the industry fights economic headwinds. Last Thursday, Silicon Valley firms Stripe and Lyft announced large-scale layoffs while Amazon said it would freeze hiring in its corporate offices.

Twitter, freshly acquired by Elon Musk, abruptly fired about half of its 7,500 employees last week. However, fulfilling its plan on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, announced the mass layoffs in a message to employees, which Meta shared on its Newsroom.

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go,” Zuckerberg said.

“We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1. I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”