Mark Zuckerberg follows Elon Musk in announcing layoffs

Mark Zuckerberg, who is the CEO of Meta, has announced that job cuts will be made, likely impacting thousands of employees.

Meta had more than 87,000 employees in September, according to AFP, who cited Securities and Exchange Commission filings. This represents a year-over-year increase of 28%, as it recruited heavily during the pandemic when business hit a purple patch.

CNBC reported that more than 11,000 employees are likely to be cut. This would be the first large scale layoff in the company’s history.

The sudden layoffs come amid Meta’s investment of billions into their “metaverse,” which has failed to prove as popular as the company hoped.

At the end of October, Meta posted its second quarterly loss of revenue since going public and reported that its profit was less than half the amount it made during the same period last year.

In the midst of broader market downturn that has hit the tech sector hard, shares for Meta have fallen more than 70% in 2022 alone.

The reports of a large head reduction at Meta come as other tech companies are taking a similar stance. Last week, payment-processing firm Stripe said it was letting go of 14% of its staff. Amazon also announced it was implementing a pause on corporate hiring.

Twitter has also announced sweeping job cuts after Elon Musk’s takeover. Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and took on significant debt to do so.