Meta has announced that it will cut 11,000 jobs — or 13 per cent of its total headcount — in the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s history.
A Meta spokesperson told B&T that they “can’t discuss anything locally at this point,” making the future unclear for workers in the company’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.
In a post on the Meta Newsroom, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he took “accountability” for the layoffs and why the company needed to make them.
Zuck said that many, including himself, thought the boom in ecommerce at the start of the pandemic would continue unchecked as the world returned to normal.
“I made the decision to significantly increase our investments.,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. 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.”
Zuckerberg also confirmed that the company is cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through Q1.
The company has been haemorrhaging money on its metaverse project, with the Reality Labs losing more than $14 billion in the first nine months of this year. Meta has also seen its advertising revenues drop as consumers and brands swap to TikTok and other rival platforms.
Meta had been on a push to draw advertisers back to the platform, hosting a “Growth Summit” in its Melbourne and Sydney offices, offering tips and tricks to advertisers to help them grow on the company’s range of platforms.
Meta will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, as well as all remaining paid time off, as a part of the severance package, the company said.
Affected employees will receive their shares that were set to vest on 15 November and healthcare coverage for six months, the company said.
