Zuckerberg says it’s his “mistake” that Meta should lay off 11,000 employees

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, who announced that the social media giant would lay off nearly 11,000 employees, representing about 13% of the total staff, admitted it was his fault the company had to cut jobs. He said he was “overly optimistic” about the company’s growth.

“At the onset of COVID, the world moved quickly online and the e-commerce boom led to significant revenue growth,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post on the Meta website.

Many people expected this to be a permanent acceleration that will continue even after the pandemic ends. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investment.”

However, he said the plan was not “carried out in the way he had unfortunately expected”.

The Meta president stated that with the layoffs, the company was to become “leaner and more efficient”. The company will use its resources on “fewer high-priority growth areas” such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and even advertising. He added that the team hardest hit by the cuts would be the recruiting team, which would be “disproportionately affected”.

Due to the sharp downturn in the US economy, corporate momentum has been affected. It has been reported that Meta has strong competitors and needs to take measures to get things back on the right track soon the edge. With Apple squeezing Meta’s ad business terribly and TikTok taking over social media, Meta is worried about its future.

In 2022 alone, the Meta has lost $9.4 billion in its metaverse technology even though Zuckerberg seems to believe in the project and believes it will take over the world within a decade.

The company’s stock price has been affected, dropping more than 70% this year. As a result, the giant has lost $700 billion in market capitalization in the past few weeks.

Zuckerberg said in a blog post that US Meta employees who are fired will receive a base salary for at least four months. They will also receive health insurance for the next six months and support for finding new jobs.

“I think we are not underestimated today as a company,” Zuckerberg wrote at the end of the blog.

“Billions of people use our services to connect, and our communities continue to grow. Our core business is among the most profitable of all with huge potential for the future. We are leading the development of technology to define the future of social connectivity and the next computing platform.”

This is the first time Meta has announced such extensive job cuts since its inception in 2004.