Meta (Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced layoffs of 11,000 employees – 13 percent of its workforce — starting Wednesday at 6 am, while retaining its presence in Israel.
The move comes as Meta joins other tech firms facing a growing global economic crisis.
This is the first time such a widespread layoff has taken place in the company’s 18-year history, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Many thousands of employees” are expected to lose their jobs in the largest layoffs to take place so far in the tech sector. Among those facing joblessness are personnel in the recruiting and business teams.
Zuckerberg has taken responsibility for the debacle, telling company CEOs in a meeting on Tuesday that his “over-optimism” about growth had led to overstaffing. Human Resources head Lori Goler told those at the meeting that those who lose their jobs will be given at least four months’ salary as severance, according to sources quoted by WSJ.
The company reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September; the company’s stock, however, has fallen by 70 percent since January amid competition from TikTok and Apple Inc.
Despite the bad news, Meta is expanding its footprint in Israel.
The company signed a lease on 51,000 square meters of office space on 20 floors in the Landmark TLV project in Sarona, the Globes business news site reported Tuesday. Meta also is keeping its current offices at Rothschild 22 and in the Azrieli Sarona Tower.
The planned layoffs are likely to affect a few dozen of the company’s employees in Israel, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Meta is closing its flagship offices on New York City’s Park Avenue and terminating its lease on two WeWork buildings in Silicon Valley, although alongside that, it has opened a new branch in midtown Manhattan and a center in San Diego.
Meta is not the only tech firm to be caught between a rock and a hard place: Google parent Alphabet, Intel, Snapchat, Twitter, Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Lyft, Stripe, Chime, Opendoor, Credit Suisse, Zillow, Noom, Udacity, Peloton, Spotify, Gopuff, and Netflix have all slowed or frozen hiring and, in many cases, also cut personnel as well in recent days.
Cuts have also been identified at Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Biogen, Pink Energy, Avaya, Novartis, Zoom, Keter, Ford, Wayfair, GoHealth, Robinhood, Walmart, Shopify, and Oracle, according to a report by WRAL TechWire.
Tech sector layoffs totaled more than 52,000 as of November 4, TechCrunch reported. Nearly 9,000 tech startup employees have lost their jobs just since November 1, not including the Meta layoffs.
All told, more than 100,000 tech startup layoffs have taken place since the start of this calendar year, according to the Layoffs.fyi database.
