By Leah Montebello
Over 600 UK Meta employees could lose their jobs as the owner of Facebook launches its biggest job cull in history, cutting 11,000 jobs worldwide.
In a note published this morning, chief exec Mark Zuckerberg said he would be reducing the global headcount by 13 per cent, regarding it as “some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history”.
The multi-billionaire blamed the pandemic and the how the world “rapidly moved online” meaning there was a “surge of e-commerce” which led to “outsized revenue growth”.
Zuckerberg, who has come under severe criticism for pushing his metaverse concept, said to employees he wants to “take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here”.
The Silicon Valley titan, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, employs around 5148 people in the UK, and opened swanky new office in London’s Kings Cross office earlier this year.
Meta said it would not be sharing any specific figures on the losses in the UK, but it could mean as many as 670 people lose their jobs if the 13 per cent reduction is applied equally across the global team.
The social media boss said the layoffs were about becoming a “leaner and more efficient company,” as well as prioritising on projects like the metaverse – something that has set the company back $9bn this year alone via its reality labs division.
However, the reality is that investors are losing confidence in this grand plan to make VR the new world.
Nearly $90bn has been wiped off the company’s market value since it announced its third quarter results last month, showing how slowing advertising spend continues to cripple finances.
To add insult to injury, there are also reports from POLITICO that the EU antitrust regulators are gearing up to send Zuckerberg and his team a list of charges for anti-competitive abuses on Facebook marketplace.
While the tech giant has previously tried to blame Chinese rivals for Facebook’s dwindling popularity, it seems even these excuses are losing their legs – even the metaverse ones.
TikTok has reportedly slashed its own worldwide revenue targets for the year by at least $2bn to $10bn, signalling how even the fast-growing social media platform is struggling to fend off the global slump in online spend. TikTok declined to comment on these reports.
Head of investment at interactive investor Victoria Scholar toldCity A.M. that although Facebook has been at odds with Bytedance-owned TikTok to nab the attention of Gen Z, the latter’s “overconfidence has led to a spending problem that has got out of control”
She reckons both firms are set to struggle as advertising dollars continue to get squeezed in the year – something that will hit Meta the hardest if Zuckerberg keeps driving home his “‘moon shoot’ bet on the Metaverse, which hasn’t paid off”.
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