The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, was giving a virtual address to Meta staff at about 1:00 PM ET following the company announced that 11,000 people, that is, approximately 13% of the overall employees, will be slacked off.
A Meta worker who was affected by the announcement filmed the virtual address and handed it over to CNBC. In the video, Zuckerberg admitted that he is accountable for the current state of Meta and expressed gratitude to the company’s workforce.
Meta slack offs are the largest layoffs in the history of Facebook, and CEO Zuckerberg wrote a long letter to the employees to inform them of the news. In the letter, Mark Zuckerberg also shared that affected employees would be given 16 weeks of base remuneration and two additional weeks for each year of service to the company.
According to CNBC, here what was said in the virtual address given by Mark Zuckerberg to Meta employees:
“I know there must be just a range of different emotions. I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision. I’m the founder and CEO, I’m responsible for the health of our company, for our direction, and for deciding how we execute that, including things like this, and this was ultimately my call.
And it was one of the hardest calls that I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company. And a lot of why it’s hard is, obviously, it has a big impact on your lives, but also for our mission. We’re losing people who… you’ve really put your heart and soul into this place.
Each of you is talented and passionate, and each of you has played a role in making Meta the success that it is. No matter what team you may have worked on, each of you played a role in contributing to the products that billions of people use to connect every day.”