Facebook Parent Meta to Cut 11,000 Jobs; Mark Zuckerberg Says ‘I Got This Wrong’
Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company will cut more than 11,000 jobs in the first major round of layoffs in the social media giant's history.
The reductions, equal to about 13% of the workforce, were disclosed Wednesday in a statement. The company will also extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in the statement that was sent to Meta employees and posted on the company's website. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I'm especially sorry to those impacted.”
The company said that while reductions will happen across the company, its recruiting team will be disproportionately affected and its business teams would be restructured “more substantially.” Meta will also reduce its real estate footprint, review its infrastructure spending and transition some employees to desk sharing, with more cost-cutting announcements expected in the coming months.
Meta, whose stock has plunged 71% this year, is taking steps to pare costs following several quarters of disappointing earnings and a slide in revenue. The retrenchment, the company's most drastic since the founding of Facebook in 2004, reflects a sharp slowdown in the digital advertising market, an economy wobbling on the brink of recession and Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar investment in a speculative virtual-reality push called the metaverse.
The shares rose about 5% in New York as the markets opened on Wednesday.
Zuckerberg said in the statement that he'd anticipated that the surge in e-commerce and web traffic from the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdowns would be part of a permanent acceleration. “But the macroeconomic
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