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| After Twitter... Meta is planning a mass layoff this week |
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Meta Inc. It plans to start mass layoffs that could affect thousands of employees in the coming days, following a similar move by rival Twitter last week.
The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said that the company plans to announce job cuts starting next Wednesday.
In October, the social network's parent company, Facebook, expected lower revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 and higher expenses next year, which would take about $67 million off the value of Meta's stock. In addition to more than $5 billion, the company lost value over the course of the year.
The disappointing outlook comes amid slowing global economic growth for Meta, competition from TikTok, Apple's privacy changes, concerns about massive spending on the Metaverse, and ongoing threats from regulators.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, predicts that it will take nearly a decade to achieve a return on investment in the Metaverse. At the same time, he had to stop hiring, complete projects, and reorganize teams to cut costs.
“We will focus our investments in 2023 on a few high priority growth areas,” Zuckerberg said in late October. This means that some teams are deliberately expanding, but most others will remain stable or shrink over the next year. Overall, we expect 2023 to be around the size of today or slightly smaller. "
Meta canceled a plan to lay off at least 30% of its engineers last June, and Zuckerberg urged employees to prepare for a recession.
In a previous open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Altimeter Capital Management employees said the company needed to streamline through layoffs and investments, adding that Meta lost money as spending increased and focused on investor confidence.
Several tech companies in particular, including Microsoft, Twitter and Snap, have announced layoffs and layoffs in recent months as global economic growth has slowed due to rising interest rates, rising inflation and the European energy crisis.