Social media giant Meta will lay off over 11,000 employees, or 13% of its workforce, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement to employees.
The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, will also cut spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023.
Photo credit: Panithan Fakseemuang / 123RF
Explaining the decision, Zuckerberg said the company had significantly increased its spending in anticipation of a “permanent acceleration” in ecommerce growth and the number of people going online.
“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 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 in the statement.
The impact of the economic slowdown has rippled across the tech industry. ByteDance-owned TikTok has lowered its ad sales target from US$12 billion to US$10 billion.
Earnings and estimates from other tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have also not met expectations, Bloomberg reported.
Editing by Arpit Nayak
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