Facebook-parent Meta will become the latest tech firm to scale back its workforce, with plans to layoff thousands of employees this week, Wall Street Journal reported. Meta had about 87,000 employees worldwide across its different platforms, which include social media sites Facebook and Instagram as well as messaging platform Whatsapp,as of September 30. The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30%, with Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm's staff would not increase by the end of 2023, and might decrease slightly in his announcement of Meta'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 in the third quarter saw its profits fall to $4.4 billion, a 52 percent decrease year-over-year. Meta's stock price took a major hit on the disappointing results, falling 25 percent in one day.
The company's market value over the past year is down to $600 billion.
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 Corp , Twitter Inc and Snap Inc 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.
*With inputs from agencies
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