News hardware Facebook is so bad that Mark Zuckerberg is doing worse than Elon Musk
The announcement was expected and it did indeed fall at Meta today: Mark Zuckerberg’s group, mainly known for Facebook, is laying off 13% of its workforce. A dark day in the tech world.
“Today I’m sharing with you some of the toughest changes we’ve made in Meta’s history” : the beginning of the message sent by Mark Zuckerberg to all the employees of his group, which still had 87,000 people this morning, announces the color. And the following confirms it: “I have decided to reduce the size of our team by approximately 13% and let over 11,000 of our talented employees go. »
The boss of Meta therefore made an announcement this Wednesday that was expected : that ofa massive layoffresulting from a dramatic drop in the company’s market capitalization since the start of 2022, but also from a tumble in its net profit.
An announcement even worse than expected
At the end of last October, during the presentation of its quarterly results, Meta had hinted that a dismissal of around 10% of its workforce was under study. This Wednesday, November 9, the announcement of a plan impacting 13% of the firm’s employees suggests that the situation was more serious than expected. This situation is historic at Meta, which since its creation in 2004 under the name of Facebook had never before had to “cut back” its workforce.
This announcement comes on top of others of the same type that have hit Silicon Valley in recent weeks: more than 3,000 layoffs at Twitter, layoffs also at Stripe and Lyft, or even a hiring freeze at Amazon. Bad times for American high-tech.
Mark Zuckerberg practices self-flagellation
In the context of Meta, one can recognize that Mark Zuckerberg shows humility by taking full responsibility for the situation in the email sent to his collaborators.
“I want to take responsibility for those decisions and how we got here. I know this is difficult for everyone, and I am especially sorry for those affected. »
The boss of Meta explains, in detail, how the company got there: we thus learn that from the start of the pandemic linked to Covid-19, Mark Zuckerberg thought, like many other heads of high-tech companies, that the rise of e-commerce and new technologies would last for many years : he therefore decided to massively increase the company’s investments.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t go as I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to earlier trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and loss of ad signal has caused our revenue to drop from what I expected. I was wrong and I take responsibility for it”
Bad decisions that now force Meta to reduce its payrollbut also to reorganize its resources towards sectors that work, such as artificial intelligence, advertising and commercial offers, but also others that have everything to prove, such as the metaverse.
Finally, Mark Zuckerberg insists that employees who are part of the redundancy plan will have access to financial compensationas well as an extension of their health insurance for six months after their departure, personal assistance in finding work, or even help in solving possible visa problems for people who are not Americans.
It should also be specified that these layoffs are not limited to the United States and that many countries in which Facebook offices are located are affected. For the time being, we do not know if the Parisian offices of the social network are concerned.