Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, announced on Wednesday that they let 11,000 employees go, aka 13% of the company. As Meta also owns companies like Twitter, Snapchat, and Microsoft Corp., people who worked at those companies were included in the layoffs.
During the pandemic, many companies hired a surge of new employees to cover the high increase in demand. Since the economy has slowly began to decline, their previous decision has no longer served the purpose they need as advertisers and consumers cut back on spending in the face of soaring costs and rapidly rising interest rates.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg sent a message to the employees laid off as he shared his regret. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”
Meta, once worth more than $1 trillion, is now valued at $256 billion after losing more than 70% of its value this year alone.
Zuckerberg did not publicly say much after this. He stuck to a script that closely followed the wording in the morning’s blogpost and called the increased investments in e-commerce a “big mistake in planning.”