Source: Boluwatife Ayo-Odewale/Technext
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, would have shrunk its staff significantly. At the time of reporting, the exact number of staff that will be sacked had not been made public by the tech giant.
Reports suggest the move is part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s initial plan to restructure teams and work towards the company’s “goal of greater efficacy” in 2023.
What we know so far
According to reports from Bloomberg, the big tech firm notified its managers to prepare for the announcement of the layoff earlier today. In a memo seen by the same news outlet, affected parties of this decision would include members of staff working at Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Quest hardware and Reality Labs, which houses the company’s virtual reality effort.
“This will be a difficult time as we say goodbye to friends and colleagues who have contributed so much to Meta,” Lori Goler, the company’s head of people, said in the memo.
Furthermore, the staff cut by Meta is part of a cost-cutting solution which is expected to reduce 10,000 positions at the company, as disclosed by Mark Zuckerberg in March 2023.
Meta lost 11,000 employees, or around 13% of its staff, in November. Additionally, it prolonged a hiring ban through the first quarter, adding to a general slowdown in employment and spending in Silicon Valley. As regards the recent layoff trends by the Facebook parent, it hopes to trim down its workforce and rebalance the proportion of technologists and engineers to business and support workers.
Bloomberg explained that company shares decreased 1.6% to $214.41. For this reason, teams would be rearranged, and some remaining employees would be reassigned to work with new supervisors, as stated in the document distributed to their managers.
According to the memo, Meta requested that North American staff who can work remotely on Wednesday do so in order to disseminate the layoff news.
In this circuit to goal fulfilment by Meta, it rebuffed giving commentary on the memo and referred to a post made by its founder in the cause of last month and establishing a schedule for late April for IT groups, late May for business organizations, to announce reorganization and layoffs.
How did Meta get here?
Many Meta stockholders expressed concerns regarding Zuckerberg’s choice to invest billions in the metaverse rather than the company’s core industries. In October 2022, an open letter to Zuckerberg from Altimeter Capital founder and CEO Brad Gerstner, a key investor, stated his urge to slash the company’s employment by at least 20% and annual capital expenditures from $30 billion to $5 billion.
In a letter to his workforce, Zuckerberg claimed that overstaffing resulted from his exaggerations of the company’s possibilities and admitted refocusing efforts on a smaller number of high-priority growth areas among the metaverse.
Source: Boluwatife Ayo-Odewale/Technext
