Meta foresees a plan for massive layoffs, according to US media
Time to Read: 1 minute
The cut in personnel could affect a good part of the 87,000 employees of the giant of social networks.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, plans to lay off thousands of employees starting this week , US media reported, as several technology companies have laid off employees in response to the economic crisis.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the layoffs could affect “many thousands” of Meta employees and that the job cuts would be announced on Wednesday.
As of September 30, Meta had some 87,000 employees worldwide on its various platforms, which include the social networking sites Facebook and Instagram, as well as the WhatsApp messaging platform.
Poor quarterly results
Following the recent release of disappointing quarterly results, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company's headcount would not increase by the end of 2023 and may even decrease slightly.
Last Thursday, Silicon Valley companies Stripe and Lyft announced large-scale layoffs, while Amazon said it would freeze hiring at its corporate offices.
Twitter, recently bought by Elon Musk, has just laid off almost half of its 7,500 employees.
These platforms whose business model is based on advertising suffer particularly from budget cuts by advertisers, affected by inflation and rising interest rates.
“Unstable macroeconomic environment”
Meta's net profit fell 4.4 billion dollars in the third quarter (-52% in one year).
“We are facing an unstable macroeconomic environment, increased competition, ad targeting issues and rising costs from our long-term investments, but I must say that our products are better than some comments suggest,” Zuckerberg said in late October trying to give a reassuring message.
However, the action of the Californian group fell 24.56% the next day on Wall Street. In one year, Meta lost close to $600 billion in market capitalization.