Meta Layoffs: Facebook owner begins job cuts - fires 11,000 employees; CEO cites reasons

Facebook Layoffs: Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts came just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner Elon Musk. 

There have been several job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic. 

 Zuckerberg said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended.

Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected, Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.

“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.” 

 Meta has enjoyed a financial boost during the pandemic lockdown the major reason behind that people were using their phones and computers. But as the lockdowns ended and people started venturing out of their homes, revenue began to falter. 

An economic slowdown and a grim outlook for online advertising by far Meta's biggest revenue source have contributed to Meta's woes. 

This summer, Meta has posted its first quarterly revenue decline in history, followed by another, bigger decline in the fall.

Meta has already worried investors by pouring over $10 billion a year into the metaverse as it shifts its focus away from social media. 

Mark Zuckerberg predicts the metaverse, an immersive digital universe, will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people use technology. Meta and its advertisers are bracing for a potential recession. 

There are many challenges of Apple's privacy tools, which make it difficult for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snap to track people without their consent and target ads to them.  

TikTok is a major competition and also a growing threat as younger people flock to the video-sharing app over Instagram, which Meta also owns. 

Last week, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, part of a chaotic overhaul as Musk took the helm. 

He tweeted that there was no choice but to cut the jobs when the company is losing over $4M/day," though did not provide details about the losses.