After
the firing of half of Twitter's employees
, it could be Facebook's company Meta, the next Big Tech that's kicking out thousands of people.
This was reported exclusively to the Wall Street Journal by informed sources according to which the cuts will be announced on Wednesday next week.
It would be the first time in its 18-year history
that the company has initiated such a marked staff reduction.
Although
lower, in percentage terms, than the Twitter cuts
that affected about half of that company's staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the highest so far achieved by a large tech company. .
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal, referring to CEO
Mark Zuckerberg's recent statement that the company "will focus its investments on a limited number of high-priority growth areas
."
This means, he said
on October 26th
during the call with analysts on the accounts, that "some teams will grow significantly, but
most of the other teams will remain stuck or shrink
over the next year".
In late June, Zuckerberg told employees that "realistically,
there are quite a few people in the company who shouldn't be here
."
During the pandemic Meta, like other tech giants,
made a lot of hires: more than 27,000 in 2020 and 2021, and then another 15,344 in the first nine months of this year
, of which about a quarter in the last quarter.
Meanwhile,
Meta's shares have fallen more than 70% this year
.
The company blamed the overall deterioration in the economic situation, but investors were also frightened by the high spending and threats to the core business of social media.
Growth of this business in many markets has stalled due to stiff competition from
TikTok
, while
Apple's request for users to consent to their device tracking
has limited the ability of social media platforms to target advertisements.