Meta fires 11,000 employees. Zuckerberg: ‘We need to be more agile’

“I was wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” With these words Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday morning 13% reduction in the workforce at Metathat’s by saying 11 thousand employees. The news was expected The Wall Street Journal In Recent Days: This is the first major restructuring of the company founded in 2004, in the name of Facebook, which has seen its stock plunge more than 70% in the past year.

Zuckerberg also reconstructed it in a letter sent to employees e Submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commissionthe cut was necessary after a “significant increase in investments” did not lead to the expected results, while “not only did e-commerce return to the levels of the acute phase of the epidemic, but the overall economic stagnation, increased competition and decline in online advertising meant that our revenues were much lower than we were I expect “.

Translator: While the entire sector is going through one of the most sensitive moments in its relatively young history due to a series of economic situations, Zuckerberg also pushed the accelerator to search for a new world that had not yet been built, metaverse Than it was in the last quarter It cost 3.7 billion dollars It will cause more losses in 2023.

When talking about competition, the 38-year-old entrepreneur refers to success You arekTok – Conditional in turn towards the announcement: 2022 goals reduced by at least 2 billion – and changes to the operating system applewhich limits the collection of user data.

Meta employees involved in the class “can no longer immediately access most Meta systems.” They will be notified with an “email” (which will remain active for today, editor) and later they will be able to talk to someone to get their questions answered,” the letter reads.

Those who reside in the United States will receive Four months’ salaryIn addition to two weeks for each year of service and six months of health insurance. For the rest of the world, including Europe, no details have yet been provided. No comment from the Italian office, which has between 50 and 60 employees. The sector most affected, in terms of attributes, will be the human resources sector.

We must “become”Smaller and more efficient company» Zuk wrote. Attempt to explain how you intend to do it: the cost reduction will also be attributed to “Limit our real estate environmentWe’re moving on to desktop sharing for people who spend most of their time outside the office. In the coming months we will implement further cost cuts like this one.”

Then: «An in-depth review of our spending on Infrastructure. As we build the AI ​​infrastructure, we focus on becoming more efficient.” The New hires will also be blocked Until the first quarter of 2023.

At the end of September, Meta had more than 87,000 employees. Of them, more than 27,000 were employed between 2020 and 2021, a full-blown pandemic. And another 15,000 this year, in 2022. Twitter fired half of its 7,500 employees last week (Just to remember some of them). Snap said in August that it would cut about 20% of its staff.