TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Facebook parent Meta is preparing large-scale layoffs this week
Meta declined to comment on the WSJ report.
Change Size
In this file photo taken on October 28, 2021, a pedestrian walks in front of a new logo and the name 'Meta' on the sign in front of Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California. (AFP/Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
M
eta Platforms Inc is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week that will affect thousands of employees, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday citing people familiar with the matter, with an announcement planned as early as Wednesday.
Meta declined to comment on the WSJ report.
Facebook parent Meta in October forecasted a weak holiday quarter and significantly more costs next year wiping about $67 billion off Meta's stock market value, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.
The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the metaverse investments to take about a decade to bear fruit. In the meantime, he has had to freeze hiring, shutter projects and reorganize teams to trim costs.
"In 2023, we're going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today" Zuckerberg said on the last earnings call in late October.
The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30 percent, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.
Meta's shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.
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, Zuckerberg said the firm's staff would not increase by the end of 2023, and might decrease slightly.
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.
Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet's Google are suffering from advertisers' budget cuts as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.
Meta in the third quarter saw its profits fall to $4.4 billion, a 52 percent decrease year-over-year.
Meta's stock price took a major hit on the disappointing results, falling 25 percent in one day.
The company's market value over the past year is down to $600 billion.
In addition to its ad-supported business woes, investors have been worried about Zuckerberg's decision to devote major funds into developing the metaverse.
