Meta announces the dismissal of 11 thousand people, 13% of its workforce

The rumors that there were going to be layoffs at Meta this week have been confirmed, and in a letter addressed to his employees, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is going to do without 13% of the company’s workers, which means that 11,000 people have been left without a job. In addition, the hiring freeze will be extended until at least the first quarter of next year.

“I want to take responsibility for these decisions and how we got here. I know that this is hard for everyone, and I am especially sorry for those affected,” the Meta CEO says in his letter

At the moment it has not been transcended in which countries or divisions the layoffs are going to take place, so we do not know to what extent it will affect Reality Labs, whose recent economic results were not too good, making investors doubt Mark Zuckerberg’s bet on XR technologies and the metaverse.

Overall, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline this year, mainly due to the slowing economy and the gloomy outlook for online advertising, which is the company’s biggest source of revenue. We cannot fail to mention the general difficulties that other technology companies are also going through. In September, Snap laid off a fifth of its workforce.

Facebook Instagram analysts point to the image problem that Facebook has as responsible for this bad economic situation, due to accusations of lack of privacy of user data, the competition of Tik Tok that has weakened the popularity of Instagram and the uncertainty about the profitability of that future metaverse. Meta’s shares have fallen 72% this year.