Over the last few months, the globe has witnessed either mass layoffs or increased resignations. This trend seems to be persisting. While Elon Musk was under fire for eliminating nearly half of the jobs at Twitter, Meta may soon experience similar reception. Social media giant Meta was reportedly preparing for “large-scale layoffs” this week.
A recent report by Wall Street Journal noted that thousands of employees could lose their jobs. Several have been speculating that the firm’s Reality Labs division will likely lose several members. It should be noted that this division endured a loss of about $3.7 billion during the third quarter of 2022.
The current workforce of Meta stands at around 87,000 across several divisions. The upcoming layoffs would be the organization’s first significant headcount cutbacks in its 18-year history.
In addition to this, Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive hinted at this occurrence during the third quarter earnings call. He said,
“So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
Back in June as well, Zuckerberg outrightly told his employees, “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”
Here’s how much Meta shares dropped last quarter
As mentioned earlier, the last quarter was quite detrimental to the social media giant. Back in October, it was brought to light that Meta’s shares plummeted by 24.5 percent. Following the third quarter earnings, the shares reportedly closed at $97.94 which is considered to be the lowest since 2016.
Meta’s Reality Labs division alone recorded a loss of $9 billion in the first three quarters. The firm even pointed out that the fourth quarter would mirror a similar notion.