Facebook’s parent company Meta has laid off more than 11,000 employees, reducing its workforce by 13%, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees on Wednesday.
“I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
Meta joined other tech firms, such as Snap, and Twitter that laid off employees amid inflation and recession fears.
“We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1,” Zuckerberg said.
On how the company came to this point, he explained that during the pandemic, the world rapidly moved online and many people projected that this acceleration would continue even after the pandemic ended.
“I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he said.
Following the announcement, Meta stock futures went up by over 4.5%.
Over the last 12 months, its price fell by 71.24%.
