Facebook's parent company Meta is set to lay off 11,000 people, reducing its workforce by 13%, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday.The news was shared around 3 a.m. PT, with employees who were getting axed losing access "to most Meta systems" removed effective immediately.In a companywide memo that was posted on the company's public pages, Zuckerberg blamed the pandemic, saying that the digital growth and "surge of e-commerce" experienced during the early days of COVID-19 -- when lockdowns meant...
Meta
Mark
Zuckerberg
Founder / Chairman / CEO
Zuckerberg remains one of the titans of the tech world, but his long struggle with unflattering coverage has been amplified by recent economic troubles. In February, Meta stock closed down 26%, reducing its market cap by $230 billion, after it forecast lower-than-expected revenue growth for the next quarter, caused in part by a change in privacy settings to Apple’s new iOS system that cost Meta billions in advertising dollars. When that forecast became reality in July with its first-ever year-over-year drop in revenue, Zuckerberg announced Meta would be trying to do more with fewer resources, culminating in November layoffs that reduced Meta’s workforce by 13%, or 11,000 people, after Meta saw a 50% decline in profit the following quarter. Prior to this, the VR and metaverse-focused Reality Labs division in February was revealed to have posted a $10 billion loss for 2021.