Facebook Parent Meta Is Preparing To Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week

Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, WSJ reported over the weekend, citing people familiar with the matter, in what could be the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry's rapid growth during the pandemic. From the report: The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the people said.

The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company's 18-year history. While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company's staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment.

Dead Wood

[jonathantn]

They've had an increasing head count for 18 years. There has got to be 10-20% of that company that is dead wood.

Meta Layoff

[Roger W Moore]

Perhaps but it won't be a true meta layoff unless they layoff the layoff so expect them to announce the plans are cancelled tomorrow.

Re:Meta Layoff

[garyisabusyguy]

All the cool CEOs are doing it

Re:

[timeOday]

It's not just that: "Meta's third-quarter revenue fell 4% year over year, to $27.7 billion, and its net income tanked 52% year over year"

When you're bringing in less money, you have to look at reducing expenses.

Re:Meta Layoff [timed for the politics]

[shanen]

But no comments on the politicized timing yet? Zuck must be pissed the news leaked in a way that some thinking voters might find credible. Not to worry, not enough thinking voters left in the States to matter.

What this story reminds me of is the time when I was working at AMD. It was the election of 1988 and the big boss and owner of AMD was a close buddy of Poppy Bush. Therefore he didn't want to announce massive layoffs before the election. There was lots of internal scuttlebutt about imminent layoffs, bu

Re:

[ganjadude]

I wonder if zuck will take as much heat as musk is taking for his layoffs.

Re:

[timeOday]

I think not, because Zuck trimming back on the metaverse doesn't signal an ideological shift. The upset at Twitter is really about liberals' fear of unleashing conservative hate speech and conspiracy theories by firing all the censors.

Re:

[shanen]

My recollection is fuzzy after all these years. Can't even remember the name of the guy running AMD at the time, but I don't think he caught much flak about it. However there was no surprise there. We had all seen the financial results. From my position in LTHV devices, we weren't even expecting the company to survive much longer, and it obviously did.

Re:

[DrXym]

Increasing head count is absolutely fine. Problem for Facebook is they decided to go "meta", losing brand recognition, suffering increasing competition from TikTok and sinking billions into Zuckerberg's VR money pit. So they lost marketshare, lost money, and lost focus.

I mean, VR could have worked if they produced a really cool, anarchic fun world to visit - something between an MMO, or Fortnite. Instead they shat out sterile zones and meeting rooms. WTF were they smoking?

Re:

[backbyter]

WTF were they smoking?

Nothing creative.

Budget to Nowhere

[Arzaboa]

87,000 people to code Second Life 2? Incredible.

After Meta's big push to have as many creators as possible review the new metaland, I can't imagine ever buying a $1,500.00(USD) headset to look at a less developed, worse graphic and overly moderated take on Second Life.

Seems to me that Zuck needs to take off the headset and step outside into the real world for a bit.

--
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste. - Henry Ford

You're underestimating what it takes

[rsilvergun]

to keep a company the size of Facebook going. They've spent 2 decades buying out competitors. They have a lot of products and those products need a lot of infrastructure. Folks don't realize how massive Facebook is because it's just a dumb website we all hate. We don't think about it as the major media conglomerate it actually is. How many people do you think Rupert Murdoch employs?

Re:You're underestimating what it takes

[garyisabusyguy]

How many people work for Rupert Murdoch?

He argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that News of the World was "just 1%" of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid. He added that he had not considered resigning, and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking. [wikipedia.org]

I'm sure this is all Elon's fault, somehow

[rapierian]

It can't be because social media companies were all over-hiring during times of easy money...

Are there any left?

[DesScorp]

It now seems like just about every big tech company has now hit the brakes, and that economic reality is setting in:

Facebook: massive layoffs
Apple: hiring freeze
Google: layoffs + hiring freeze + project freezes
Twitter: Thanos snap

Not to mention all of the smaller companies and startups that are firing... Square, etc. So what's left? Who haven't we heard from? IBM? Oracle? Is there anyone else left on the butcher-block parade?

Re:

[gregarican]

Don't forget Amazon, likewise instituting a freeze in corporate hiring.

Re:

[RobinH]

Amazon has a big benefit: they're profitable. Twitter and the like are thrust into a situation where they need to figure out how to be profitable. However, Amazon does have one big weakness: their cheap delivery is based on gig workers doing the last mile of delivery at below-minimum-wage rates, and that very cheap labour is drying up. But Amazon is self-funded, so I believe they can survive. Uber is the company hit both by needing to figure out how to be profitable, and how to operate without their sup

Re:

[timeOday]

Amazon does have one big weakness: their cheap delivery is based on gig workers doing the last mile of delivery at below-minimum-wage rates, and that very cheap labour is drying up

Higher delivery prices could actually benefit Amazon, so long as they resist it a little more than the competition.

It's like how the gas line at Costco is longest when gas prices are high, or McDonald's thrives when the economy is bad.

I guess at some point higher delivery prices could tilt the market back in favor of brick

Re:

[RobinH]

For something that's not in stock at my corner store, absolutely Amazon could be the preferred vendor, but if I start seeing the shipping charge show up on my Amazon bill again, or if prime becomes prohibitively expensive, or if the product prices start to rise well above the local store prices, absolutely I'm willing to drive and pick it up myself.

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

or if the product prices start to rise well above the local store prices, absolutely I'm willing to drive and pick it up myself.

Already seeing this with some items, which is a bummer because it meant spending my saturday driving all over the metro area buying stuff that is being price-gouged on Amazon.

Re:

[timeOday]

For me it is worth comparison-shopping ebay and walmart, even though we do have Amazon prime.

Particularly Walmart. They have free curbisde pickup for groceries at a 'corner store' which is nearby, so we do that every week. But you can add items from their website that will have to be shipped to the order, and they get shipped free because the groceries put you over the minimum order size for free shipping. So, no more having to walk through huge walmart for a jug of motor oil.

Re:

[timeOday]

But the higher delivery prices are largely due to more expensive gas, which might raise the cost of driving your own car around town to get a few items even more than it drives up the cost of delivery.

Re:

[RobinH]

I would argue that the higher price has a little more to do with labour price and availability. In 2010 you had two large generations in the workforce (the boomers and the millennials) and you had a financial crisis that caused jobs to dry up. A whole bunch of young people bought into the gig economy, some even praising it, even though it offered no job security, no benefits, and wages barely meeting minimum wage after you factored in vehicle maintenance and the like. Both Uber and Amazon Prime delivery

Re:

[snowshovelboy]

absolutely I'm willing to drive and pick it up myself.

Its easy to forget that it takes a gallon of gas to drive myself to the store and back again, causing the "shipping" for that trip to wal-mart to be $5. Sure, you can stop "along the way", but amazon can deliver to you along the way to another customer. Instead of seeing a shipping charge, what's more likely is that they will artificially increase shipping times so that they can make more optimal delivery routes by having more stops to put on the route. Wait a minute, what happened to prime 2 day?

Re:

[wdr1]

Amazon has a big benefit: they're profitable.

That's a weird statement to make here. With the exception of Twitter, all of these companies are profitable. Massively so.

Apple had 20.72B in profit. Google had 13.91B in profit.

Even Meta made a 4.39B in profit. Grant a lot more modest, but it's even greater than Amazon's 2.87B.

Re:

[quantaman]

Just to be clear, this is about addressing the threat of unionization. These companies are creating the recession so that workers feel vulnerable. If you're anti-union you should be against this too, since it's a union of capitalists.

They definitely don't have the power to cause a recession.

More likely, they're worried about the possibility of a recession so they want to reduce their headcount ahead of time. And since layoffs are bad news it's advantageous to announce at the same time as everyone else (makes your layoffs seem more justified and there's other similar stories to fill the press).

If there's a more cynical take it would be that they're not really worried about their own sustainability during the recession, but rather, they f

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

No, but as individual dominos in the string that does cause recession, they can choose to wobble a little bit more than they really need to.

Re:

[BytePusher]

Isn't it obvious the tech industry is colluding to avert unionization? If you don't see it, you're simply not paying attention. We see countless stories of how FAANGs are fending off unionization efforts, through illegal firings, intimidation, layoffs, etc. Capitalism, once the capitalist attains enough wealth, is no longer about the capitalist living in leisure; For the billionaire capitalist capitalism becomes a game of amassing as much power as possible before people revolt and take it from him or anothe

Re:

[quantaman]

Isn't it obvious the tech industry is colluding to avert unionization? If you don't see it, you're simply not paying attention. We see countless stories of how FAANGs are fending off unionization efforts, through illegal firings, intimidation, layoffs, etc.

Nope, the only big tech firm at risk of unionization is Amazon, and that's in their massive blue collar workforce. There's never been a serious unionization effort among tech workers, certainly not the ones at big tech firms who tend to be the best paid in the industry.

And, if you're under some fantasy that the Biden engineered recession is anything except a fight against unions, what is the primary excuse capitalists give for their price increases? Wage increases. In 2020, we had liberal politicians decrying 40 years of wage stagnation, while in 2022 we have politicians decrying wage inflation and bringing out every weapon in their arsenal to squash wage inflation without harming the profits of billionaires(who are making record profits).

Why on earth would Biden engineer a recession??

If anyone is "engineering" a recession it's the fed who is trying to raise interest rates to bring down inflation. And that's price inflation, not wage inflation, because the big problem with pri

Re:

[PackMan97]

Square is a decade old, has >8,000 employees and over $17 billion in revenue last year. They are far removed from being a startup.

Re:

[OzPeter]

Twitter: Thanos snap

Twitter is trying to undo the snap [huffpost.com]
Apparently it's not a good idea to layoff key employees. Who'd have thunk it?

---

BTW Kudos to you for the "snap" reference. It works on so many levels.

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

Apparently it's not a good idea to layoff key employees. Who'd have thunk it?

In one week! I've been through several layoffs in my corporate life (always made it though!) and it's always always a months-long effort to ensure continuity, that the critical people are retained, and try to minimize harm to employees when possible, i.e. try not to lay off lay new parents or someone who might have a more difficult time because of a disability etc.

Of course the big emerald genius only needs to sort the employee list by lines of code committed to instantly boost profitability.

Re:

[ganjadude]

the layoffs were in the works before musk took over......

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

But they just had to execute it within a week of him taking control? Riiight.

Re:

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Machiavelli in his The Prince says when you must punish your subjects it is best to do it all at once, whereas when you reward them it is best that you do it continuously and little by little.

That does make sense for mass firings too, those who remain know they are safe and can focus instead of constantly fretting if they'll be given the slip in the coming weeks and months.

In both cases it's important you do it right though.

Re:

[S_Stout]

IBM and Oracle are always firing, they don't wait for a specific day to do it.

Re:

[gtall]

Couldn't tell that from small business hiring. The WSJ had a story on how small businesses are continuing to hire, that's showing up in the employment statistics. I tend to think the big companies, with more on the line, are trying to get ahead of a possible recession.

Re:

[thejynxed]

Small business, medical, etc are starving for applicants. Where the cuts seem to be coming is in the overly saturated desk job areas like the management layers, HR, etc.

Twitter laid off a ton of people, but most of them from reading in various sources, seem to be the "middlemen" in any organization, with very few engineers or programmers getting the axe, while groups like content moderation, HR, sales, management, etc got walloped.

Re:

[radarskiy]

"Is there anyone else left on the butcher-block parade"

Companies that make actual things. The only one you list is Apple, and they are still hiring in the areas that make actual things.

Tech job cuts are expected

[RobinH]

If you go back ten or so years, the likes of Meta, Twitter, Uber, and so on were running on essentially free money. The mantra was: here's a bunch of money, go and grow as much as possible and don't worry about being profitable. Uber, particularly in trouble, based its business model on gig workers willing to work below minimum wage jobs for the "freedom" of it. Now everything's changed financially: the cheap capital needed to run forever without a profit has dried up, and the labour market has tightened and shows every indication of continuing to tighten for the foreseeable future. Yes, this means high inflation (or just high interest rates to compensate) is here to stay. But it also means we should expect these tech company layoffs as they try to figure out how to be profitable. But the nice thing is that while corporate profits are going to either plunge or stagnate, labour is going to remain relatively scarce. So it'll be easy to find a job, but you won't be able to afford much with it because productivity is going to stay low. Assuming you're some kind of programmer being laid off from Meta, there are lots of more traditional industries that really need to get more productivity out of their expensive workers. Look outside of Silicon Valley. We're headed for lots of onshoring of manufacturing. Enterprise software development is going to be in high demand. Some of the ERP solutions are even cloud-based and would be using the same skills you picked up at Meta, presumably.

Re:

[PackMan97]

Meta's operating profit was ~40%. They have been making money hand over fist for the past decade. It's been a long time since they been in the business of making money. They've just been able to do it and grow at the same time. Meta, Google and other social media companies are running into the problem that they are really just a big advertiser. As times get tough, the advertising budget is the first to go as companies look at ways to reduce their cost to acquire new customers.

Planned Event?

[Ronin Developer]

Anybody else see these massive layoffs by CEOs who oppose the democrats and their agenda as mere posturing?

Name a better way to turn the minds of many by kicking them where it hurtsâ¦their wallets ⦠during an election weekâ¦l

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of the companies mentioned do you believe "oppose the democrats and their agenda"?

I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply to Apple, Facebook or Google.

Re:

[Quake1v1]

I'll play along.

* "Two weeks" to slow the spread
* Massive economical hit to everyone involved
* inject trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of fiat currency, just created out of thin air, into the economy for corporate and social welfare
* * paying for those "free" experimental gene therapy shots that don't stop the spread, or transmission

= ridiculous inflation and corporate layoffs

Re:

[imse]

Lay-offs and hiring freezes are happening outside the US as well, though.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Anybody else see these massive layoffs by CEOs who oppose the democrats and their agenda as mere posturing?

Nope, we don't subscribe to your newsletter.

But we get it. The only thing going on in the world right now is an election. There's precisely zero significant financial and economical conditions currently influencing the market. It's business as normal, we just gotta fire people because of elections. Yes siirrreee.

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

It's charming that you think Apple and Google "oppose democrats" in any way.

They probably oppose certain anti-trust actions some democrats would like to take, but on balance they would really much rather have that, than anything the GOP has on offer for them - repeal of section 230, and probably more than a little talk of breaking up big tech in an AT&T way.

Re:

[dskoll]

I think they will find a way to work together. Purely by coincidence, I happen to have just read The Myth of Capitalism [wiley.com] and it has a whole chapter on how monopsonies or oligopsonies depress wages and enforce crappy working conditions.

Why do you think Amazon gets away with abusing its warehouse workers and delivery drivers? Because they're pretty much the only e-commerce game in town.

The only thing that might possibly fix the situation is strong anti-trust enforcement and the breakup of Amazon, Alphabet/G

Oppertunities Abound!

[El Fantasmo]

First, the obligatory /sarcasm

Wonderful, now all these people have been freed from the shackles their employers to peruse new, personally meaningful and enriching opportunities! Who knows what they will create next? Maybe one of them will make the next Facebook!

Now that Meta will lean out, it can better focus on it's core competencies to provide a better more engaging and personal user driven experience fostering humanity to reach it's peak potential.

Re:

[Voyager529]

Now that Meta will lean out, it can better focus on it's core competencies to provide a better more engaging and personal user driven experience fostering humanity to reach it's peak potential.

No establishing a brand trajectory, right-sizing opportunity-based viabilities, or leveraging synergies? Clearly you just barely scraped by getting your MBA.

87,000?

[battingly]

Look at the Facebook app/platform. Now look at the number of Meta employees: 87,000. How could that business possibly employ 87,000 people?

What does the WSJ mean by "industry"?

[rnturn]

Is the WSJ referring to the companies whose main revenue source is selling their users' personal information and internet activity history to advertisers? Frankly, I'm not opposed to that industry having to go through a downsizing.

40,000 laid off

[RemindMeLater]

would only bring them back to 2019 employment levels. Seriously.

Today they employ 87k. At the end of 2019 it was 45k. https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net]

Let's hope the chopping block grows larger

[shubus]

Good news, indeed! Let's hope they keep axing employees until FB ceases to become relevant. No company deserves it more.

Zero confidence in own offering

[insurgioFather]

All I need to know as to learning and possibly using/deving platform.

De-FAANGing in process

[erp_consultant]

Meta (facebook) is just the latest casualty in the FAANG fallout.

F (Meta) - user engagement is way down and so is advertising. Since almost all of their revenue comes from advertising the stock price has predictably tumbled. Users are leaving for TikTok. Long term outlook is very grim. They are turning into MySpace before our very eyes.

A (Amazon) - Supply chain issues have left them with not enough inventory at first and now too much. Likely recession in the US next year will put a damper on consumer spending but long term they will be fine. They still dominate retail and their only real competitor in the online space (Walmart) can't seem to build a competitive website.

A (Apple) - Their earnings are still holding up. Apple fans love their products. Long term they will be fine.

N (Netflix) - They are losing customers and raising prices at the same time. The big studios are taking their content back and creating their own streaming services. I think these guys are in big trouble.

G (Google) - Another ad revenue dependent company. I have a feeling that Twitter is going to make a run at video hosting, a la YouTube. If they do it will be a threat. But Google has that Ad Sense cash cow still coming in so they will be fine. I just wonder how much longer they can continue to piss away money on these projects that start up and then fold shortly afterwards. This company needs better leadership.

Three points:

[tiqui]

[1] The last time inflation was this bad was 40+ years ago, and none of these companies existed. These companies, and the people running them, and most of their investors, have ZERO experience with the combination of high interest rates (which are more attractive to investors than companies that are losing money), high rates of inflation, and a likely deep and severe recession resulting from these things. They have no experience base to fall back on for operating in the business environment they are current