Second round of layoffs in Facebook-Whatsapp and Instagram

Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, is planning a second round of layoffs. A Bloomberg report claimed that Meta will fire thousands of employees earlier this week. The report cited people familiar with the matter. Meta has asked directors and vice presidents to make a list of employees who can be let go in this phase of layoffs.
In the first round of layoffs last year, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, which was 13% of the entire workforce. For the first time in the company's 18-year history, such a large number of employees were retrenched. The announcement to remove the employees was made by the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He attributed this to the decline in revenue due to wrong decisions.
Mark said, 'Today I am going to tell about some of the most difficult decisions made in the history of Meta. We have decided to reduce our team size by approximately 13%. Due to this, more than 11 thousand talented employees will lose their jobs. We are taking steps to become a more efficient company by cutting expenses and extending the hiring freeze through Q1.
Mark had said, 'At the beginning of Kovid, the world rapidly went online and the increase in e-commerce increased the revenue. Many predicted that this increase would be permanent, and would continue even after the end of the pandemic. I thought the same, so I decided to increase my investment. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectation.
Not only has online commerce returned to earlier trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, competition, and less advertising have resulted in revenue being lower than I expected. I made this mistake and I take responsibility for it. In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. We have shifted resources to high-priority growth areas.
AI discovery engine, advertising and business platform and our long-term vision for the metaverse. We have cut the cost of business, including reducing the budget, reducing perks and reducing the real estate footprint. We are restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone will not bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I have also taken the difficult decision of letting people go.
Meta had 87,314 employees by the end of September 2022. Meta currently owns some of the largest social media platforms in the world including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. However, the company is increasing its spending on the metaverse.
The Metaverse is a virtual world where users can create their own avatars. The company has been incurring losses due to a low law adoption rate and costly R&D. The layoffs are expected to ease the financial crisis of the company to some extent.