According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told hundreds of executives on Tuesday that Meta platforms will begin laying off employees from Wednesday morning.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Meta chief Zuckerberg appeared low spirited and took accountability for the company’s indiscretion and said that his overoptimism about growth had led to recruitment of excess employees the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Zuckerberg explained the reason for broad lay offs and particularly mentioned that the recruiting and business teams would be among the ones facing facing layoffs, the report stated. It also added an internal announcement that the company’s layoff plans are expected to begin around 6 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.
The report said that those particular employees who are losing their jobs will be informed over the course of this morning.
At the end of September, Meta reported more than 87000 employees. The decision comes in after other social media and big tech companies such as Twitter and Microsoft announced massive lay offs to cut costs. Recently Twitter laid off half its staff across teams ranging from communications and content moderation following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company.
However, a report published by Bloomberg on Sunday stated that Twitter was calling back it’s fired employees. According to an Axios report, Microsoft Corp also slashed off approximately 1,000 employees across several divisions in October.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lori Goler, Meta’s Head of human resources stated that the employees who will be fired will get four months of severence well in advance. The company refused to further comment on the matter.
The tech world had yet not recovered from Twitter layoffs when most META employees woke up shocked to hear the news of massive layoffs in their own company. Some employees have even taken up to LinkedIn and other social media sites to express their amazement. A front-end content creator who currently works at META, Ashima Ahuja, says, “ there has been anxiety all over the internal communication channels.”