When Elon Musk terminated about half of the workforce at Twitter, it seemed to have started a trend. Now the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta, has reduced its work force by 13 percent and extended a hiring freeze through the first quarter of next year. Meta joins other tech companies, such as Snap, which have laid off employees as economic conditions have grown more challenging. While many of these companies boomed during the coronavirus pandemic, some of the largest ones have reported financial results in recent weeks that showed they are feeling the fallout of global economic jitters.
Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September it had amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people. But that has ended as on Wednesday, the company began cutting jobs, and deeply.
The layoffs were made across departments, though some areas, like recruiting, were affected more than others.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg met with executives to discuss the layoffs, two people who took part in the meeting said. One person who was present said the chief executive took responsibility for the cuts, saying his company had scaled up too quickly. Meta had also canceled travel plans for employees to ensure they were available to meet with managers, should their team be affected by layoffs, three other people said.
For years, Meta had been a powerhouse company, growing rapidly as Facebook accumulated more users and bought companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Not even scrutiny over its data privacy practices and the toxic content on its apps could affect its financial performance, as its stock continued climbing and its revenues soared. At one point last year, Meta was valued at $1 trillion.
“These cycles of boom and bust are incredibly destructive within organizations because people employed there feel like they don’t know where they stand,” said Sandra J. Sucher, a management professor at Harvard. By rapidly hiring across all departments during the pandemic, Mr. Zuckerberg had set up his company to need reductions in staff, she said.
