San Francisco (The Hawk): Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, fired about 11,000 workers on Wednesday, or nearly 13% of the company's global workforce, in one of the largest layoffs in corporate history. He also extended a recruiting embargo through Q1 2023.
Given the extent of access to sensitive information, the corporation also disabled most Meta systems for departing employees, "keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone may bid farewell."
The corporation will pay 16 weeks of basic pay as severance, plus two more weeks for each year of service, "with no cap."
Over 87,000 people are employed by the parent firm of Facebook (NASDAQ:META) and Instagram (as of September).
Zuckerberg announced in a statement that the business will take additional measures to become leaner and more effective, including reducing discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through Q1.
According to Zuckerberg, "today I'm sharing some of the most challenging adjustments we've ever undertaken at Meta. I've decided to cut the size of our team by around 13% and let go of more than 11,000 of our great employees."
I know this is terrible for everyone, and I'm especially sorry to those impacted, but I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we arrived at this point, he continued.
Everyone will shortly receive an email informing them of the implications of this layoff, according to the CEO of Meta.
Then, he continued, "any affected employee will have the chance to speak with someone, get their issues answered, and participate in educational sessions."
Everyone impacted will get their November 15, 2022 share vesting, and Meta will cover any remaining paid time off (PTO) hours.
According to Zuckerberg, the business would "give three months of career support through an external vendor, including early access to unpublished employment leads." They will also "pay the cost of healthcare for workers and their families for six months."
He attributed the decision to the financial slump, increasing competition, and loss of advertisements signals, claiming that these factors made "revenue far lower than I'd projected."
"I made a mistake, and I accept responsibility for it. We need to become more capital efficient in this new climate. The CEO of Meta stated, "We have concentrated more of our resources on a smaller number of high priority development areas, such as our AI discovery engine, our advertising and commercial platforms, and our long-term vision for the metaverse.
"We've reduced expenses across the board, including budgets, benefits, and the size of our real estate portfolio. Teams are being reorganised to improve productivity. I've also had to make the difficult decision to let employees go since these steps by themselves won't be enough to bring our spending into line with our revenue growth, Zuckerberg continued.
Even the most influential Meta investors have expressed disapproval of his $10 billion per year metaverse plan.
According to Zuckerberg, being laid off is particularly challenging if "you're here on a visa."
"Everyone will have time to make arrangements and sort out their immigration status because there is a notice period prior to termination and some visa grace periods. In a blog post, he wrote, "We have devoted immigration specialists to help guide you depending on what you and your family require."
"Support will be similar outside the US, and we'll follow up with distinct procedures that take into account local employment regulations soon," he continued.
(Inputs from Agencies)