The Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week that puts thousands of employees at risk of losing their jobs.
After Twitter’s new head-honcho Elon Musk laid off nearly 3,700 employees from its workforce last week, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is also expected to follow closely behind, with employees expected to be notified as soon as Wednesday.
According to reports from The Wall Street Journal, Meta company officials have already told its 87,000-strong workforce to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week.
Meta's job cuts would relatively be smaller on a percentage basis than Twitter laying off nearly 50% of its workforce last week; however, the number of employees expected to lose jobs could be "largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment".
The planned Meta layoffs come in light of the company’s revenue declined for two straight financial quarters, with stiff competition from TikTok and the ever-increasing expenditure on the Metaverse.
Earlier in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta might cut expenses by at least 10 per cent through job reductions following a 70% plummet in stock this year. The company blamed macroeconomic situations for the fall in revenue.
A majority of Meta’s inflating expenses stem from Zuckerberg’s prioritisation of Reality Labs, the Meta division responsible for the creation of the Metaverse and the virtual and augmented reality headsets for the same. An estimated $15 billion has been spent on developing the Metaverse initiative so far.
Here’s hoping that Zuck is as flaky when it comes to firing his workforce as Musk has proven to be as of late.