Meta: Facebook’s parent company planning huge layoffs
In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta intended to reduce costs in the upcoming months by at least 10%, partially by laying off employees.
“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” At a company-wide gathering at the end of June, Mr. Zuckerberg informed the staff.
As life and business migrated further online during the epidemic, Meta, like other internet behemoths, embarked on a recruiting binge. In 2020 and 2021 combined, it hired more than 27,000 workers.
In the first nine months of this year, it gained 15,344 workers—roughly one-fourth of those during the most recent quarter.
Over 70% of Meta’s stock has been lost this year. Investors have been alarmed by the company’s expenditure and potential dangers to its main social media business in addition to the company’s highlighting of worsening macroeconomic conditions.
Due to TikTok’s fierce competition and Apple Inc.’s demand that users consent to Apple tracking of their devices, the company’s growth in many areas has slowed.
This has limited the capacity of social media platforms to target advertisements.
In October, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, predicted a dismal Christmas quarter and much higher costs in 2019, which will reduce Meta’s stock market value by around $67 billion and add to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.
The unfavorable forecast comes as Meta struggles with the declining global economy, TikTok’s rivalry, Apple’s privacy improvements, worries about big spending on the metaverse, and the constant danger of legislation.
“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” on the most recent earnings call in late October, Zuckerberg stated.
In an open letter to Mr. Zuckerberg last month, the investment company Altimeter Capital said that Meta should reduce employees and scale back its plans for the metaverse in light of the growing unhappiness among shareholders.
However, a large portion of Meta’s spiraling expenses is attributable to Mr. Zuckerberg’s dedication to Reality Labs, a unit of the business that developed the metaverse and virtual and augmented reality headsets.
The corporation has spent $15 billion on the project since the start of last year. Horizon Worlds’ users, however, have not been too thrilled despite significant marketing expenditures.
The Journal stated in the previous month that the number of users at Horizon Worlds had significantly decreased over the course of the year to just under 200,000, or roughly the population of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Is the Metaverse a live-saving boat for Meta or is it too early for Meta to bet big on Metaverse?
