Mark Zuckerberg reveals why Meta fired 11,000 employees; says sorry

Facebook parent company, Metal, on Wednesday, announced its decision to lay off 11,000 employees, or about 13 per cent of its workforce, in what the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg called as one of the most difficult challenges the company made in its history.

In a blogpost, Zuckerberg said he decided "to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go."
He said the company is taking a number of additional steps to "become a leaner and more efficient by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1."
Taking responsibility for the decisions and how the company got to the situation it is facing now, he said he knows it is tough for everyone and apologised to those who lost jobs.

Writing about why the company was forced to take the decision, he said, "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. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."

"In this new environment, we need to become more capital efficient. 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. We’ve cut costs across our business, including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking our real estate footprint. We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go," he wrote.

He said the company will do whatever it can to be of assistance to those who have been asked to leave. "Everyone will get an email soon letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, every affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and join information sessions."

Announcing the benefits that those who were sacked in the US will receive, he wrote:
Severance: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap.
PTO: We’ll pay for all remaining PTO time.
RSU vesting: Everyone impacted will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting.
Health insurance: We’ll cover the cost of healthcare for people and their families for six months.
Career services: We’ll provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.
Immigration support: I know this is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa. There’s a notice period before termination and some visa grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make plans and work through their immigration status. We have dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based on what you and your family need.

The support to those who have been laid off outside the US will be similar, he wrote. “We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially,” he wrote, adding, "This is not a reflection of the great work these groups have done, but what we need going forward. "

Announcing the changes that will be made in the wake of a number of employees leaving the company, he wrote: "I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go...For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to desk sharing for people who already spend most of their time outside the office. We’ll roll out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months."

He also announced an extension to the hiring freeze. "I’m going to watch our business performance, operational efficiency, and other macroeconomic factors to determine whether and how much we should resume hiring at that point."

The Meta CEO said he is also reviewing the infrastructure spending of the company.