A day after Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced the firing of 13 per cent of its staff, or nearly 11,000 employees, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to employees.
"I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that," he told employees on Wednesday.
"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 said in a statement.
"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," Zuckerberg added.
He said that Meta had over-invested in recent years after the pandemic led to increased revenues but it did not play out the way he 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," he added.
India employees concerned
The layoff by Meta has affected the Indian employees of the company. Though no additional details or country-specific numbers are out yet, Meta's India staff are looking for clues on their future.
This comes just days after Twitter fired over 90 per cent of its over 200 India staff as part of a global reduction by new owner Elon Musk.
At present, Meta has an estimated 300-400 employees in India and the smallest team of 60-plus is with WhatsApp. "We are not providing details on specific team impact," Meta India said in response to an email seeking comments on country-specific impact.
Earlier this month, Meta India head Ajit Mohan resigned from the company to join rival Snap in February.
"Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company. Over the last four years, he has played an important role in shaping and scaling our India operations so they can serve many millions of Indian businesses, partners and people," Meta's Global Business Group Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn said in a statement on November 3.
Mohan, who resigned with immediate effect, had joined Meta which was earlier known as Facebook in January 2019 from Hotstar.
(With inputs from PTI)
