Meta is reportedly planning to begin large-scale lay-offs this week expected to affect thousands of employees, The Wall Street Journal said Sunday citing people familiar with the matter.
The owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp could announce layoffs as early as Wednesday after the company’s disappointing third quarter results.
“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.
Meta accounted for over 87,000 employees worldwide as of September across its different platforms.
Just like other tech companies, Meta is facing difficulties with slowing global economic growth.
While Twitter released about half of its 7,500 employees last Friday, other Silicon Valley firms also announced adjustments to their workforce last week after Stripe and Lyft announced lay-offs and Amazon said it would freeze hiring in its corporate offices.
Amid a growing competition from rival TikTok and a tightening ad market, Meta said it expects to lose $10 billion in ad revenue in 2022 as a result of privacy changes by Apple.
