After Twitter and BYJU’s, now Meta to layoff several employees globally: Report

Amid the news of layoffs across several companies, including Twitter, BYJU’s and many others, Facebook’s parent company Meta has also decided to cut down several jobs that are likely expected to affect many thousands of its workforce. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the planned layoffs at Meta would mark the first significant headcount cuts in the organisation’s 18-year history.

Although smaller in terms of percentage than the layoffs at Twitter, which affected about half of the company’s staff, the number of Meta employees anticipated to lose their jobs may be the highest to date at a major technological corporation in a year that has seen a retrenchment in the tech sector.

Meta layoffs

At the end of September, Meta stated that it employed more than 87,000 people. Officials from the company have already instructed staff to postpone unnecessary travel starting this week.

In September, a report said that Meta intended to reduce costs in the upcoming months by at least 10 per cent, partially by laying off employees. The layoffs, which are anticipated to be revealed this week on Wednesday, come after several months of more focused workforce cuts. During this time, individuals were managed out or had their functions removed.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said recently that “some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year”.

During the pandemic, as life and business transitioned more online, Meta went on a hiring binge. More than 27,000 new employees were hired in total in 2020 and 2021, and this year’s first nine months saw an additional 15,344 hires — roughly one-fourth of those made in the most recent quarter.

Layoffs across the globe

Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has laid off approximately 3,500 workers, practically all of whom were employed there. The CEO, Parag Agarwal, the CFO, the head of policy, and the firm’s lead counsel were all removed shortly after the acquisition. On November 4th, Twitter informed its staff that it was “reducing our global workforce”. Reportedly, only 20 people from Twitter’s 300-strong workforce in India still remain at the company.

Edtech platform BYJU’s recently laid off 5 per cent of its total workforce, which is said to be 50,000. BYJU’s founder and CEO, Byju Raveendran, wrote a note for all the employees and apologised to those fired. He stated that several adverse macroeconomic factors had forced India’s most valuable startup to take this decision. Rival Unacademy also fired 350 employees recently, with the CEO issuing an apology to the laid-off workers.

Meanwhile, several other tech giants, including Netflix, Microsoft, Snap, and others, have recently downsized their workforce by thousand.