For the past few days, Twitter has been causing a lot of waves for its haphazard way of laying off roughly 50% of its workforce. The company has been sued for initiating layoffs without giving enough notice and has been criticized by some political leaders too. The situation has worsened to the point that the social media company is now asking some former employees to return.
Now, it seems like Meta is ready to announce layoffs this week too, with the move impacting thousands of employees.
Although the scale in terms of percentages won"t be the same as Twitter, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that Meta will cut headcount by thousands out of its current workforce of roughly 90,000 employees globally. This will be the biggest layoff round in the firm"s history and is also expected to be the biggest in terms of headcount reduction when it comes to big tech firms within the past year.
Meta has declined to comment on the report, but it won"t be entirely surprising if it is indeed true. In September, we learned that Meta is aggressively restructuring its organization, with layoffs expected to begin soon. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying that:
For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically [sic] every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time.
We want to make sure we"re not adding people to teams where we don"t expect to have roles next year.
Meta"s stock value has recently fallen too, mostly because of its expensive metaverse initiative, which has failed to take off so far. Some shareholders have also been asking for headcount reductions and reduced investments in the metaverse and overall capital expenditure. We"ll likely find out soon if Meta does plan to proceed with layoffs, including its effect on the workforce.
Source: WSJ (paywall)