Meta Lays Off More Than 11,000 Employees

More employees have been hired by Facebook since its founding in 2004. At the end of September it had more workers than any other time in its history.

The company started cutting jobs and deeply on Wednesday.

Meta said it was cutting more than 11,000 jobs, or 13 percent of its work force. Some areas were affected more than others by the layoffs.

In a letter to employees, Mr. Facebook said he wanted to take accountability for the decisions. I'm sorry to those who have been impacted.

The scale of the cuts represent a stunning fall for a once high-flying company. It spent a lot of money over the years, buying companies and showering its employees with perks. The financial performance of the company was unaffected by scrutiny over its data privacy practices and toxic content on its apps. Meta was worth $1 trillion a year ago.

The company has struggled financially this year as it has tried to move into a new business, the so-called metaverse, while also grappling with a global economic slowdown and a decline in digital advertising. New competitors like TikTok were able to capture a younger audience. Meta had a 50 percent slide in profits last month. Its stock has plummeted.

During the Pandemic, a surge in online commerce led to a big spike in revenue. He thought the shift would be permanent and would lead to a significant increase in spending.

"Unfortunately, this didn't play out the way I wanted it to," he said. I took responsibility for that.

The reduction in the size of Meta's work force marks an attempt to reduce some of the exuberance that came to define an era of success. The company would cut back on real estate in order to reduce budgets. There was a hiring freeze in place.

Artificial intelligence, advertising and the metaverse are some of the areas the company will focus on.

Two people who were in the meeting said that Mr. Facebook met with executives to discuss layoffs. The person who was present said the CEO took responsibility for the cuts. Three other people said that Meta had canceled travel plans for employees to make sure they were available to meet with managers. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Facebook had a meeting with executives.

Meta said it would give employees 16 weeks of their base pay and two additional weeks for every year they worked at the company if they lost their job.

Meta's stock price rose after the layoffs were announced.

Meta is one of the tech companies that have laid off employees as the economy has become more difficult. Some of the largest companies have reported financial results recently that show they are feeling the effects of the global economic downturn. Half of the company's 7,500 employees were laid off last week by Musk, who said that the company was losing $4 million a day.

According to a management professor at Harvard, boom and busts are destructive because employees feel like they don't know where they are. She said that Mr. Zuckerberg had set up his company to need to reduce staff.

Many of the perks that employees used to enjoy will have to be cut back. He said in March that the company was going to eliminate or trim free services. He made it harder for employees to take home dinner for themselves and their families by reducing the company's free dinner offerings.

In July, Mr. Zuckerberg warned employees that the company was experiencing "one of the worst downturns that we've seen in recent history" and in September, a hiring freeze was announced.

He warned last month that teams would stay flat or shrink. He said that the company would be roughly the same size or smaller than it is now.

Two executives said that the financial commitments of Mr. Facebook have been building over time.

Virtual-reality headsets are a niche product and there is no guarantee that people will buy them. The people said that the core business of social networking was at risk because Meta had spent too much on trying to realize Mr.

Reality Labs, the part of the company working on the metaverse, had an operating loss of $3.67 billion. Reality Labs had its lowest revenue in a long time. Reality Labs is expected to lose money next year.

Ryan Mac made a report.