Meta Plans to Conduct Mass Layoffs Starting Wednesday, Expected to Affect Thousands of Employees

As of the end of September, Meta has 87,000 employees. This might be reduced as the company will be conducting mass layoffs on Wednesday that will affect thousands of its employees, including important positions of staff members.

Meta's Mass Layoffs

According to a report from Wall Street Journal, Meta plans to conduct mass layoffs this week that will start on Wednesday. Sources of the report said that this will be affecting thousands of Meta employees and could hit harder than the recent Twitter mass layoffs. The officials from the company have also given a memo to several employees to cancel non-essential travel for this week, which might be because of the planned layoffs.

After its launch 18 years ago, this will be Meta's first layoffs that a huge number of employees are expected to lose their jobs. Compared to other tech giants who conducted mass layoffs (like Twitter laying off half of its workforce), the one with Meta could be the largest to date in a year. Meta's spokesperson declined to confirm this news.

Early Signs

Last September, Meta conducted freeze hiring and gave a statement that they might be downsizing in the future. Now that there are rumors that this will take off this week, there are still no confirmations from the company regarding this matter. Despite it being unconfirmed, this news is not a surprise to many as Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg stated during the latest earnings call that the company will be focusing its investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas.

He stated, "So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today."

During an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg also stated that a lot of his employees should not be in his company as his next move for Meta is to raise expectations and have much bigger goals in the future. Aside from the CEO, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox also gave a warning to Meta employees in June that the company's environment became a place for slower growth as they face these "serious times."

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Written by Inno Flores