Layoffs in the tech industry continued Wednesday, as Facebook's parent company, Meta, announced it was parting ways with more than 11,000 employees, around 13 percent of the brand's staff.
In a letter announcing the decision, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed the decision on a surge of e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the company make strategic errors in investments. "Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected," Zuckerberg said. "Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn ... [has] caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected."
Beyond the layoffs, Zuckerberg also said Meta would take additional steps to "become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze."
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These layoffs were not completely unexpected, due to similar layoffs being seen across the industry, and Reuters reported the firings were Meta's first in its 18-year history.
Despite this, some experts looked to the move as a potential warning sign for the company, especially given Zuckerberg's controversial decision to focus significantly on his virtual-reality "Metaverse" as the brand's future. Many pundits decried Zuckerberg's focus as the true cause of the brand's financial issues, given that the company has spent more than $10 billion on the Metaverse this year, per SEC filings.
"This is a company with too much money and too little original or innovative thought," The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo wrote in an op-ed. "It's burning billions on a party that nobody wants to attend."
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