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Facebook Cans 11k Employees, Here’s Who they Fired

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Meta Platforms Inc. said it would cut more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of staff across all its businesses (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp ect.)

This is Zuckerberg’s and Facebook’s first broad “restructuring” as it deals with a poor digital-ad market and an anemic stock price that fell by 70% this year.

The layoffs add to a wave of job cuts that are rolling through Silicon Valley, where tech giants that added employees by the tens of thousands through the pandemic are now turning around and firing them.

In his message to employees, Mr. Zuckerberg talked about META’s strategic direction. “I believe we are deeply underestimated as a company today,” he said. “Our core business is among the most profitable ever built with huge potential ahead. And we’re leading in developing the technology to define the future of social connection and the next computing platform.”

These layoffs amount to the first time in the company’s 18-year history that staff has been massively reduced.  Stiff competition from platforms like TikTok, regulatory pressure from governments, and Apple’s rejection of their tracking/advertising model are all reasons Meta is plunging.

But I think we all know that the biggest reason is that people are simply not using Facebook as much as they used to, and no matter what META reports to stockholders, nobody is using the “Metaverse”.

It’s hard to say if the ‘last in the door, first out the door’ principle is in effect with the 11,000 firings, what we do know is META is definitely cutting from its Facebook Journalism Program, it already let go of several top people at the META Journalism Accelerator, a wing of facebook that gave support, training, and grants to local newspapers and journalists…in our opinion Meta’s most noble cause, given how devastating Meta has been to the news business in general.

In 2020 Facebook Journalism Project Provided $16 Million in Funding to Support More Than 200 Local Newsrooms, vital support to important small news institutions during the pandemic.   To put that in perspective, Zuckerberg reportedly spent $15 Billion on the Metaverse in 2022 alone.  To be fair, Zuck probably doesn’t need real reporters in the fake world he’s building.

Twitter & LinkedIn feeds lit up on November 9th with posts from people being laid off at META, and they are from a lot of different sectors.

Tech social scientists

 

An entire VR/AR teams

Data Scientists

Tech Policy Lawyers

Software engineers

Fresh recruits

Meta’s share price climbed more than 6% on Wednesday after the layoffs were announced.

Zuck told employees that U.S. staffers who are losing their jobs will receive 16 weeks of severance, plus an additional two weeks for each year of employment at the company, and their stock options set to vest in mid-November will still vest.  He said repeatedly that he took accountability for the layoffs.

META had 87,000 employees in September 2022, and approximately 76,000 in November 2022…

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Alex Mak - Managing Editor

Alex Mak - Managing Editor

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