Mark Zuckerberg Penned A blog For Meta Employees

Days after Elon Musk faced criticism for sacking hundreds of staff, Mark Zuckerberg-owned Meta has reportedly decided to lay off over 11,000 employees. This is being described as the most significant job cuts in the history of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The widespread employment losses come after layoffs at other significant tech firms, such as Elon Musk-owned Twitter and Microsoft.

Mark Zuckerberg Penned A blog

Meta's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post today, "Today I'm sharing some of the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history. I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go."

In addition, Zuckerberg added, "We are reducing discretionary expenditure and extending our hiring freeze through Q1 in an effort to build a leaner and more effective firm."

Mark Zuckerberg apologised to the Meta staff and accepted responsibility for the choices. "I want to accept responsibility for these choices and how we arrived at this point. I'm sorry to those who have been impacted, I know this is difficult for everyone " he said.

How Did They Get Here

In the statement, Zuckerberg claimed that he had foreseen that the spike in online sales and web traffic that followed the start of the Covid-19 lockdowns would be a permanent acceleration. "However, the global slump, heightened competition, and loss of ad signal have resulted in our revenue being significantly less than anticipated. This is where I erred," he further said.

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Employees Receive A Few Weeks Severance

Employees would receive 16 weeks of base salary as severance, plus an additional two weeks for each year of service as per reports. According to the corporation, employees will be reimbursed for healthcare expenses for six months.

The reductions, which are a part of the first significant budget cut since Facebook's founding in 2004, are due to a sharp decline in digital advertising revenue, an economy that is teetering on the verge of a recession.

By focusing resources on "High priority development areas" including its AI discovery engine, ads and business platforms, as well as its metaverse project, Zuckerberg emphasised the need to become more capital-efficient.

The layoffs at Meta come after those at Twitter last week when that business reduced its employees by almost 50% after Elon Musk took over the Social Media platform. Those layoffs were chaotic as per as the reportage which emerged on various social media platforms. Many workers reportedly discovered they were no longer employed when their access to Slack or email was suddenly shut off. Later, he asked a few sacked employees to come back.

This is a developing story.