After Twitter, Meta Platforms likely to fire thousands of employees

Will be first broad headcount reduction in the tech giant's 18-year history

Meta Platforms is planning to begin layoffs that will affect thousands of workers from this week, Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The job cuts could come as early as Wednesday, the newspaper said. The company has already told employees to cancel non-essential travel from this week, according to the report.

Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company executives already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the people said. The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history.

Meta shares rose as much as 3.5 per cent during premarket trading in New York on Monday. The stock has declined about 73 per cent for the year through Friday, when it closed at $90.79 a share.
 

 

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg in September outlined plans to reorganize teams and reduce headcount for the first time, following a sharp slowdown in growth at the parent of Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg said then that Meta will likely be smaller in 2023 than it was this year.
 

The layoffs come as Meta struggles with growing losses and as it invests heavily in developing its metaverse business.
 

“Meta may seek at least $3 billion to $4 billion in opex reductions through layoffs and fixed-cost cuts to bring its view closer to the lower end of its expense guidance of $96 billion to $101 billion,” Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Mandeep Singh wrote in a note on Monday.
 

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Meta was planning to cut expenses by at least 10 per cent in the coming months, in part through staff reductions.
 

Meta, like other tech giants, went on a hiring spree during the pandemic as life and business shifted more online. It added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021 combined, and added a further 15,344 in the first nine months of this year—about one-fourth of that during the most recent quarter.
 

The cuts will add to already mounting job losses in Silicon Valley. Twitter last week slashed nearly 3,700 positions after Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the social media platform. Other companies that have also reduced their workforce or announced plans to include ridehailing firm Lyft and hard drive maker Seagate Technology Holdings.
 

A spokesman for Meta declined to comment to the WSJ.