Posted on 11/07/2022 10:48:46 AM PST by Red Badger
Facebook parent company Meta is set to announce large-scale layoffs that will affect thousands of employees this week, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The cuts could end up being the largest tech workforce reduction conducted this year, surpassing the recent Twitter layoffs that will reportedly affect at least half of its workforce. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September.
While smaller on a percentage basis than the Twitter layoffs, the number of axed employees could account for one of the largest labor reductions across all industries this year. For Meta, which previously went by Facebook, the move will account for the biggest round of layoffs in the company’s 18-year-history.
A spokesman for Meta declined the outlet’s request for comment, referring to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s recent statement that the company would “focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas.”
“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” he said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 26. “In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Meta was looking to reduce expenses by 10 percent over the next year, in part through staff reductions. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg told employees at a companywide meeting in June.
Like many companies in the tech space, Meta added a sizable number of employees in 2020 and 2021 as online became more common due to the pandemic. The social media giant added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021, and added an additional 15,344 in the first nine months of this year.
At the time of the planned layoffs, Meta’s stock price is down 70 percent on the year. The company has seen its growth share in the social media space decline in face of increased competition from Apple and TikTok, while the company itself has blamed deteriorating macroeconomic trends.
On the financial side, Meta’s spending has significantly increased over the past few quarters, causing its cash flow to decline by 98 percent in the previous quarter. Much of the company’s spending has been put towards the “metaverse” and Zuckerberg’s commitment to Reality Labs, a division of the company responsible for both virtual and augmented reality headsets as well as the creation of the metaverse.
Zuckerberg has described the metaverse as “a constellation of interlocking virtual worlds in which people will eventually work, play, live and shop.”
Investors appear to be spooked by the company’s heavy focus on the metaverse. Last month, investment firm Altimeter Capital said in an open letter to Zuckerberg that Meta should slash staff and cool its metaverse ambitions, the report stated.
Stay woke stay brooke
Myspace 2.0
wait for it.
Oh, did Musk by Meta, too?
Fewer fact-checkers? GREAT. Maybe we can get some truthful messages out.
just coincidental that the election is this week.
Seems like their business model was destined to fail. Especially when people figure out that FB were doing things that the people may not want them to do. Such as collect personal and semi personal information and sell it to large companies.
Now they’ll have to get real jobs with no support animals or massages at lunch. They’ll have to do the crap jobs I had to do when i was young.
As long as the layoffs are confined to the social media companies, good - I’m all for it. These companies will have to trim non-developers first - the drones. Those people deserve to be out of jobs.
I can see the headlines now...
THOUSANDS OF JOBS LOST IN WAKE OF HISTORIC GOP SENATE/HOUSE GAINS, FEARS GRIP COUNTRY AS RAMIFICATIONS OF GOP ROUT BEGINS...
lol
A lot of these companies hired people just to keep their rivals from hiring them. Or, they came along with an acquisition. That works, I guess, if Wall Street is willing to bankroll it.
Will they connect who was President when they were hired or gainfully employed and who is President now when they are getting fired?
That’s what you get for propping up communist libtards
I hope they go bankrupt
ROTFLMAO!!!😂🤣😂🤣
When the product is free, you are the product.
HBO cancelled Westworld but I am thinking about Season 3 (sorry for spoilers) where the entire world is connected by devices that are giving the people only bits of information that “the man in charge” wants them to have in order to control their decisions. Even the criminals, which are harder to control, are being controlled by an app that pays them to commit the dirt that “the man” wants done or which otherwise contributes to a predetermined outcome.
So people willingly give all kinds of information - their name, age, spouse, locations, sex, interest and hobbies, career, jobs, everything you ever searched for or looked up - should not be surprised that this information is used in the attempt to influence your future decisions and behaviors.
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