Facebook parent Meta planning massive layoffs this week: report
Needham Senior Analyst Laura Martin discusses Meta’s one-day crash ranking the worst in stock market history and weighs in on the future of the company.
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is planning to let go of thousands of employees this week, marking the first wide-ranging layoffs in the social media platform's history, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The cuts add to broader reductions across the tech industry, with Twitter, Snap, Microsoft and other companies trimming their workforces in recent months.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on Sunday, but directed FOX Business to comments that CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg made during a third-quarter earnings call last month.
"In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas," Zuckerberg told investors on Oct. 26. "So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year."
Mark Zuckerberg, via video, speaks at the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 15, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (Samantha Burkardt/Getty Images for SXSW / Getty Images)
Zuckerberg added that Meta expects to "end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today."
Meta stock is down about 73% so far this year.
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Altimeter Capital, a Meta investor, sent an open letter to Zuckerberg and the tech giant's board of directors last month, calling for them to trim the company's workforce by 20%.
"Like many other companies in a zero rate world — Meta has drifted into the land of excess — too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency," Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner wrote in the letter. "This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes."
Facebook's Meta logo sign is seen at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar, File / AP Images)
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Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta last year as the company shifted its focus to the metaverse, a move that has struggled to gain traction.
Meta employed 87,300 at the end of September, which represented a 28% jump over the year prior.