META, the parent company of Facebook, has announced that it is laying off 11,000 members of its workforce worldwide, representing a reduction of about 13%.
It is as of yet unknown how the Irish Meta workforce will be impacted by the lay-offs.
However 3,000 people are directly employed in Ireland by the company meaning that 390 jobs are at risk.
In the UK, 5,000 people are employed by the company, meaning 650 jobs are at risk.
Those working in recruitment will be disproportionately affected by the announcement.
The news comes just days after both Twitter and Stripe announced significant worldwide lay-offs.
Additional steps are also going to be taken by Meta to cut discretionary spending and extending a current hiring freeze through to Q1 2023.
In a statement this morning, owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to "take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here."
"At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments.
"Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."
He said resources are being shifted to a number of high priority growth areas like AI discovery engine, ad and business platforms and the metaverse.
Meta has slo costs including scaling back budgets, reducing perks, and shrinking real estate footprint.
"We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go."
Those affected by the lay-offs will be contacted by email today.
In the US, the severance package includes 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, with no cap, immigration support and career services, among other things.
"Outside the US, support will be similar, and we’ll follow up soon with separate processes that take into account local employment laws," the statement by Zuckerberg continued.
"We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive information. But we’re keeping email addresses active throughout the day so everyone can say farewell.
"We’ll share more on how we’ll operate as a streamlined organization to achieve our priorities in the weeks ahead. For now, I’ll say one more time how thankful I am to those of you who are leaving for everything you’ve done to advance our mission," he finished.
Today's broad job cuts, the first in Meta's 18-year history, follow thousands of layoffs at other major tech companies including Elon Musk-owned Twitter and Microsoft.
