Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is reportedly intending to fire thousands of workers this week. The Washington Post reports that although the number of employees anticipated to lose their jobs may be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment, the job cuts at Meta would be relatively smaller on a percentage basis than the ones at Twitter last week (about 50%). Currently, the corporation employs around 87,000 employees.

According to the article, the layoff procedure at Meta will start as soon as November 9—a Wednesday. Without confirming the firings, a corporate representative informed the publication that the company will concentrate on investments on a small number of high priority growth sectors. Senior supervisors reportedly instructed staff to stop booking unnecessary trips starting this week.

For a while, job losses at Meta were anticipated after the company's revenue fell for two consecutive financial quarters. In an August meeting, even CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the firm employs a bunch of individuals who shouldn't be here. In the discussion, Zuckerberg also said he is cool if staff members feel alienated at Meta.

The Wall Street Journal earlier in September stated that Meta might reduce staff in order to reduce costs by at least 10%. The corporation attributed the decline in revenue to macroeconomic conditions. Like most other tech behemoths, Meta saw rapid growth during the height of the COVID shutdown, adding 27,000 new employees in total between 2020 and 2021. It is currently feeling the heat as a result of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, growing inflation, difficulties with TikTok and Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT), and other factors.

Even though Reality Labs, the project's developer, is struggling to turn a profit, the firm is still optimistic about its expansion, particularly the Metaverse project. Concerns were addressed by Zuckerberg on his most recent earnings call. "I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment," Zuckerberg said. He added, "People are going to look back on decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here". If Meta fires thousands of workers, it will be similar to Twitter's decision to let go of over half of its personnel. On the first day of the takeover, Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, sacked key executives. A few days later, he fired about 3500 people, including workers at the Twitter office in India.