Facebook: Meta makes big cuts sacking 13% of its workforce

Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has announced the biggest job cuts in the giant's history, with 13% of its workforce set to lose their jobs in a move that follows big redundancies at Twitter, Oracle and Microsoft. 

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the job cuts are "the most difficult changes" the company has made in its history and he blamed pursuing growth plans too optimistically, spurred on by the pandemic. "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," he said.

Adding: "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."

While it's true that 42,000 new employees have joined since the start of 2020 and the economic slump and looming recession has led to a scaleback of spending and specifically reduced ad spending, Zuckerberg is continuing to invest $10 billion a year in the Metaverse, which, as of yet, has not paid off - not by a long shot. 

Interestingly, Zuckerberg, to the dismay of stakeholders, is not scaling back on metaverse plans and as recently covered by Baxtel, is continuing to invest in data center growth.