Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is laying off 13% of its employees — over 11,000 people, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a letter to Meta employees Wednesday morning.
The cut is the largest layoff in the company’s history, according to Financial Times.
What did Mark Zuckerberg say?
“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go,”
“We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1,” he continued.
The CEO also apologized stating, “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.”
Why is Meta is laying off 13% of its employees?
A staff cut was expected from Meta as the company vastly increased its staff by over 40,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Deseret News reported.
In his letter, Zuckerberg explains that the “surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth,” but the growth did not continue after the pandemic as he had predicted.
“I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” Zuckerberg wrote.