Facebook-owner Meta will lay off 11,000 employees

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp owner Meta has announced that it will reduce its employees by 13%.

From a total of 87,000 employees worldwide, 11,000 will lose their employment as a result of the company’s first major layoffs.

The adjustments, according to Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, were “the most challenging changes we’ve ever done.”

The revelation comes after significant layoffs at tech companies like Twitter, which reduced its workforce by roughly half.

He issued a statement saying, “I know this is difficult for everyone, and I’m extremely sorry to those impacted.”

Massive long-term growth expectations based on the company’s revenue increase during the pandemic, according to Mr. Zuckerberg, were to blame.

He added, “I too believed that this would be a permanent acceleration, therefore I decided to dramatically expand our investments.”

Instead, he said that “macroeconomic slump” and “increasing competitiveness” were to blame for revenue being far lower than anticipated.

I made a mistake here, and I accept responsibility for that, he admitted.

It was widely anticipated that job losses would be announced.

The ideas were disclosed by Mr. Zuckerberg to hundreds of Meta executives on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Primary Priorities

According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the business would concentrate on high-growth sectors including advertising, artificial intelligence, and “our long-term ambition for the metaverse.”

Additionally, Meta will reduce expenditure on office space and structures while promoting desk sharing.

He stated that affected Meta employees would shortly receive an email and will have the chance to ask questions.

Redundancy payments for US workers will equal 16 weeks’ pay plus one week for each year of service. Additionally, family health insurance will still be available for another six months.

Ireland and UK

In Dublin, the location of Meta’s European headquarters, 3,000 workers are reportedly employed directly by the company, in addition to numerous contractors.

As of December 2021, Meta employed more over 5,000 individuals in the UK, according to a Companies House report.

However, Meta has yet to disclose how many layoffs it will implement in each nation.

It is critical that Meta adhere to UK rules around redundancies, according to Kevin Poulter, an employment attorney at Freeths.

According to him, “trust in the tech job market and the ability to switch between established and start-up organisations freely and easily within a week had been reduced, if not totally undercut.”