Social networks Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms will reportedly become the latest tech giant to scale back its workforce, with plans to dismiss thousands of employees this week.
The newspaper said that Meta’s layoffs plans – the first major layoffs in the company’s 18-year history- could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation and follows the stronger market competition, the surge in spending, and the sharp post-pandemic fall in its stock price.
According to the WSJ, Meta’s management plans to announce the layoffs as soon as November 9 and has already told employees to cancel non-essential travel starting this week.
The latest plans from Meta follow a recent announcement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the firm’s staff might decrease slightly and would not increase by the end of 2023 due to Meta’s disappointing third-quarter results.
Across its different platforms – social media sites Facebook and Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp- Meta had about 87,000 employees worldwide as of September 30.
Refusing to comment on the matter, a spokesman for Meta referred to Zuckerberg’s October statement on the few high-priority growth areas the company plans to focus on, noting that while some Meta teams will grow meaningfully, most others will shrink or stay flat over 2023.
The company, which has hired more than 40,000 staff over the last three years, was also planning to cut expenses by at least 10%.
This year, its stock price has fallen by more than 70% due to its spending and threats to Meta’s core social-media business although Meta’s leadership emphasized as the main cause the deteriorating macroeconomic trends.
According to the WSJ, Meta has also been hit by a series of financial penalties internationally, most recently last month when the company was ordered to pay an $18.63 million fine by the Turkish competition watchdog which established that Meta has gained an unfair advantage in advertising by the merging of user data from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
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