Meta is facing the biggest layoffs in history

The last month of autumn will not be joyful at all for many employees of Meta Corporation — in just a few days, thousands of them are likely to be fired, falling under the largest layoff in the 18 years of the company's existence.

This summer, the social media conglomerate corporation Meta (Facebook until October 28, 2021) had to rethink its recruiting plans. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg, its founder, warned employees about the financial problems expected soon, provoked by the decline of the global economy. His predictions were confirmed: already in the fall, difficulties swept over the company. The first wake-up call sounded in the American media on November 5-6 — there appeared information about the impending large-scale reduction of workers, the announcement of which is scheduled for November 9. Zuckerberg explained his decision with the sad results of the 3rd quarter and severe restrictions on the number of directions for financial investments in 2023. He noted that all technology companies are now experiencing the same difficulties.

In fairness, it must be said that not only the slowdown of the economy on a global scale is to blame for Meta's problems. Brad Gerstner, head of shareholder investment firm Altimeter Capital, previously sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg urging him to urgently optimize costs and cut staff. He also emphasized that investors have already ceased to trust Meta, because its costs are growing, the value of shares is falling, and it is too focused on the development of the metaverse.

Many ad-supported online platforms today face significant budget constraints from advertisers. In early November, the taxi aggregator Lyft and the developer of solutions for electronic payments Stripe began to lay off their employees en masse, the popular web service Amazon decided to stop recruiting, and the social network Twitter, acquired by Elon Musk, recently announced that it was laying off half of its employees.