Mark Zuckerberg apologises to staff for job cuts. 11,000 for the chop

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta has apologised for letting 11,000 of his “talented employees” go to try and be a “leaner” company as they continue to focus on metaverse investments.

In a blog post, Zuckerberg said the company is trying to become a more efficient company by also cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through its first financial quarter.

This is the first time the social media giant has had to undergo mass job cuts.

In his apology-blog, he said, “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Two weeks ago, Meta posted its third quarter results showing a 0.9 percent revenue drop as it competes with the likes of TikTok, slowing global economic growth, concerns about massive spending on the Metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.

Zuckerberg blamed the lack of “permanent acceleration” in the digital sector post-Covid for the job cuts.

He explained, “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Due to this new economic landscape, Zuckerberg said the company is shifting more of its high-priority growth areas such as its AI discovery engine, its ads and business platforms, and long-term vision for the metaverse.

He said while they’ve made cost cuts across the business such as scaling back budgets, reducing work perks and reducing its real estate footprint, the company still has to make people redundant.

Employees should be receiving communication in the next day to see how these layoffs will impact them.

Meta has not been the only one feeling the pinch of inflation, Google, Amazon and Snap posted poor results for the recent financial quarter.