Meta has laid off more than 11,000 employees in its first mass layoff: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the firm will lay off about 13% of its workforce. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, released a statement this morning confirming that the company will lay off more than 11,000 people. The layoffs, affecting about 13% of Meta’s workforce, are the first mass layoffs in the firm’s 18-year existence. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Zuckerberg said in a statement, “I want to answer for these actions and how we got here.” Everyone suffers, but I sincerely sympathize with those directly affected. The Reality Labs department, which was responsible for Meta’s recent move to VR/AR projects, is just one of many affected by the layoffs.
Less than a week before Meta’s layoffs, Twitter, the social media competitor recently bought by the world’s richest man, Ilon Musk, laid off about half of its roughly 7,500 employees.
Since the summer, tech firms of all sizes have been cutting their workforces due to rising costs and expectations of a downturn next year. The number of people laid off by Meta is more than any other IT company this year. The company is facing its first revenue loss since going public 10 years ago in July, and its quarterly earnings are down more than half from the previous month.
After Zuckerberg’s controversial decision to invest billions to create an immersive online world driven by virtual reality, dubbed the “meta universe” in 2022, the value of Meta, a trillion-dollar firm in 2021, fell below Nomeo Depot in 2022.

Meta investors have been pushing the business to cut funding for Reality Labs, the department responsible for all Meta projects. Reality Labs lost $3.7 billion last quarter, and the company lost $10.2 billion for all of 2021. Meta also predicted that Reality Labs’ losses would increase “substantially” in the coming year during the company’s last earnings call.
Meta’s Quest VR gear allows users to enter an immersive world called Horizon Worlds, which has been criticized for poor graphics and flaws so severe that even Meta employees don’t use it.
In addition, Meta’s core ad targeting business took a hit because of Apple’s new privacy settings for iOS devices. In addition, digital advertisers have cut back because of the unstable economy, and Instagram users, especially teens and young adults, have flocked to TikTok.

Top Meta executives had been hinting at impending layoffs for months. The corporation stopped hiring new employees in September. Meta will “manage people who don’t succeed,” Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in his weekly presentation, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg, speaking at a company-wide conference, said: “Realistically, there are some people at the firm that shouldn’t be here.” And I believe some of you could just say this is not the place for you because I’ve raised the standards and I have more aggressive goals and just turn up the heat a little bit. And I don’t have a problem with people picking themselves.

In discussing the company’s future last month, Zuckerberg indicated that resources would be devoted to “a limited number of development priorities.” He clarified, saying: “Overall, we expect to be the same size or somewhat smaller by the end of 2023 than we are today.”