Meta’s massive layoffs affect over 11.000 employees

Mark Zuckerberg, in one fell swoop last Wednesday, announced the dismissal of 11,000 employees of Meta, parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, a cut of 13% of the company's total workforce. 

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Zuckerberg acknowledged that he made mistakes in making large investments "I accept responsibility for these decisions and for getting to this point," he noted on his blog. He also apologized for his over-optimism in the company's growth, which led him to overstaff.

"I know this is hard for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected," he added.

The market reaction to Meta's massive layoffs 

Investors thought that Meta’s massive layoffs were the right call as Meta's shares went up after the announcement, rising 6.36% late in the trading day.

The announcement of the layoffs also included a freeze on any new hiring until at least the first quarter of 2023.

Since Facebook's founding in 2004, the real wunderkind of the current web, the mother of all social networks, has been making significant and steady hires. At the end of September, the conglomerate had 87,314 people, the largest number of workers it had ever had on its payroll.

‘Over-contracting’ in times the good times

The staff cuts are the deepest of all the company's personnel cuts and are spread across departments and regions, although some areas, such as recruitment and business, have been more affected than others. The sifting even affects Reality Labs, the division that houses the metaverse, the future, and projects.

"At the beginning of covid, the world moved rapidly online and the growth of digital commerce led to a huge expansion of revenues," he stressed.

In his argument to justify the over-contracting, he qualified that "many predicted that this would be a permanent acceleration, which would continue after the pandemic was over".

Elon Musk Twitter massive layoff was dwarfed 

Meta - former Facebook -  for many years seemed to have no limits and be capable of overcoming the serious problems regarding user privacy, and many other controversies. 

But now, the economic pressure has pushed Meta to undergo a massive cutoff that - among other things - was manifested in a layoff three times the size of the recent Twitter layoff. 

But also Shopify fired roughly 10% of the staff, and many other tech companies like Snapchat and Salesforce have announced massive layoffs also.