By Sarah El Arab | Staff Writer
Meta Lays Off Large Number of Employees: A New Domino Effect?
By Sarah El Arab, Staff Writer
Technology & Business Collaboration
In the past ten years, Facebook and other technology companies have witnessed dramatic success in their work field: lofty profits, high-paid job positions, and lucrative stocks. At the start of November, Mark Zuckerburg, the executive chief of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced via a dismaying letter the slumping of Meta and hence the layoff of over 11,000 of its staff, 13% of its working force. This mass layoff left the aggrieved employees and parties in absolute shock as many talented employees saw the ideal careers they had built for themselves collapse.
Zuckerburg explained explicitly in his message the different reasons that led to the company’s rigid decision. He remarked Meta had rushed to over-hire employees during the pandemic in order to meet the demand of the users who showed excessive interest in their products during Covid lockdowns.
“At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended.”. However, after the lockdowns came to an end, the demand on Meta’s products decreased.
Zuckerburg added in his letter that Meta invested billions in the “metaverse”; a virtual world that mimics our reality’s aspects. However, the metaverse has cost Meta around $9.4 billion so far, and future losses are expected to emerge in the long run. Meta placed high hopes on the “metaverse technology”, but it did not yield much profit, on the contrary it imposed excessive burdens on Meta. Mark Zuckerburg clarified this critical matter explicitly in his letter. “We’ve shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of high priority growth areas — like our AI discovery engine, our ads and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse.”
In an attempt to lessen the catastrophe on the laid off employees, Meta took several measures so as to not cut off its former employees mid way through their collective progress. The company announced it will be providing them with 16 paid weeks with an additional 2 weeks’ pay for every year of service. Additionally, Zuckerberg was certain their insurance would be activated for the coming six months. Unfortunately, despite Meta’s efforts to lessen the blow, the mass layoff cannot be disregarded. In fact, this confident step on Meta’s part led other companies such as Twitter and Snapchat to walk on the same path and announce the termination of their workers’ employment.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/amazon-facebook-twitter-layoffs-silicon-valley-boom-bust.html
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/14/1136659617/tech-layoffs-amazon-meta-twitter
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/meta-to-lay-off-more-than-11000-thousand-employees.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90808533/what-mark-zuckerbergs-layoffs-letter-didnt-say