Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta company to sack 11,000 employees

Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for over-investing in Facebook parent company Meta as he announced more than 11,000 lay-offs.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta company will lay off more than 11,000 of its staff in “the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history”, the tech titan said.

The cuts represented one in eight staff after a calamitous collapse in revenue has left the company behind Facebook overstaffed and “inefficient”, he said in a note to staff on Wednesday US time.

He added: “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here.

“I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Mark Zuckerberg has laid off 11,000 employees of Meta. Picture: AFP

Mr Zuckerberg said the lay-offs would affect its research lab focusing on the metaverse as well as its apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

It comes as the tech industry descended further into a significant slump and several major firms have announced mass lay-offs — Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk fired half its staff last week.

Meta has dumped 11,000 workers. Picture: AFP

Ad-supported platforms such as Facebook and Google are suffering with advertisers looking to cut costs as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates.

Mr Zuckerberg told staff he had expected the boost in e-commerce and online activity during the Covid pandemic to continue, but added: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

The downturn has affected companies across the sector, with Apple and Amazon also recently announcing results that disappointed investors.

But Meta also faces some unique problems of its own.

Facebook’s longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg (with Mark Zuckerberg) left the company in June after 14 years. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Investors have been worried about Mr Zuckerberg’s decision to devote billions of dollars to developing the metaverse, an immersive version of the web accessed via virtual reality headsets.

Mr Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta a year ago to reflect the commitment to the project, but the division working on metaverse technology has since made losses of more than $US3.5 billion ($A5.4 billion).

Mr Zuckerberg has hinted that belt-tightening measures were just around the corner and said in his letter that staff redundancies were a “last resort”.

Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire after a slew of recent controversies. Picture: AFP

Meta would also keep a hiring freeze going into next year, he said, and other spending cuts were envisaged.

“Fundamentally, we’re making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we’re operating efficiently,” he wrote.

Last month, Meta announced profits of $US4.4 billion ($A6.8 billion) in the third quarter, a 52 per cent decrease year-on-year, causing its stock price to fall 25 per cent.

The slump in profits comes despite its platforms dominating the world in terms of users — Facebook alone claims to have around two billion people who log on daily.

– with AFP

Originally published as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta company to sack 11,000 employees