According to reports, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta are preparing for “large-scale layoffs” this week due to rising costs and a recent decline in its share price.
The planned layoffs could affect thousands of workers across Meta’s 87,000-strong workforce, according to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report from Nov. 6 that cited people familiar with the situation.
It is unclear at this time whether Reality Labs, a division of the company, which reported a $3.7 billion loss in the third quarter, would make staff reductions.
In a statement made last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company would be concentrating its investment on “a small number of high-priority growth areas,” including the metaverse, its artificial intelligence (AI) Discovery Engine, and its advertising and business messaging platforms.
“So that means some teams will grow significantly over the next year, but the majority of other teams will remain flat or contract […] Overall, we anticipate being either about the same size or even a little bit smaller than we are now by the end of 2023.
The billionaire businessman appeared to reiterate his support for the company’s investments in these sectors during the earnings call, saying they should “keep heavily investing in these areas” because they are “on the right track with these investments.”
Only a week prior, Meta reported its third-quarter earnings, which fell short of projections in terms of revenue and saw an increase in operating expenses. Shares of Meta are currently trading at $90.79, down 7.56% over the last five days and 73.19% year-over-year, according to Yahoo Finance. Its stock price also suffered.
Despite this, the company still appears to be actively hiring for its metaverse division, as evidenced by the fact that 38 of the 413 job openings on its list of openings relate to augmented reality and virtual reality.
