Meta lost over half a trillion dollars in value this year (Picture: Getty Images)
After Twitter, it looks like Meta employees are facing the threat of layoffs this week.
Meta, the social media giant that owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is planning large-scale layoffs that will affect thousands of employees.
An announcement is expected on Wednesday, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.
In October, Meta forecasted a weak holiday quarter and significantly more costs next year wiping about $67 billion off Meta’s stock market value, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.
The disappointing outlook comes as Meta is contending with slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects the metaverse investments to take about a decade to bear fruit. In the meantime, he has had to freeze hiring, shutter projects and reorganise teams to trim costs.
In June, Zuckerberg warned employees to brace for an economic downturn (Credits: Meta/Cover Images)
Meta declined to comment on the reports of layoffs but a spokesperson pointed to comments made by Zuckerberg on the last earnings call in late October.
‘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’ said Zuckerberg.
‘In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today,’
In June, the social media company had cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.
Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.
Several technology companies, including Microsoft , Twitter and Snap have cut jobs and scaled back hiring in recent months as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.
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Meta lost over half a trillion dollars in value this year
