Meta axing 11,000 jobs after big bets go wrong

Facebook's parent company Meta on Wednesday said it is cutting more than 11,000 jobs, or 13 percent of its workforce, marking the most significant job cuts in the tech giant's history as it tries to become "leaner and more efficient".

The social media giant also will cut discretionary spending and extend a hiring freeze through March, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Meta, said in a statement.

Meta's stock has lost more than 71 percent of its value this year, and the company became the worst performer in the S&P 500 last week.

Meta's shares ended on Wednesday trading 5 percent higher after the company announced the layoffs.

The job cuts will affect much of the company, and Meta's recruiting team will be hit particularly hard as "we're planning to hire fewer people next year", Zuckerberg said in a blog post.

The layoffs come as the company takes a big gamble on building the metaverse. Part of the hiring boom in recent years has focused on building immersive digital realms accessed through virtual reality, which Zuckerberg says will be the next great computing platform after mobile phones and replace some in-person communication.

Last month, the company posted a second consecutive quarter of declining revenue and said that its profit halved from the same period a year earlier. Once valued at more than $1 trillion last year, Meta's market value has since plunged to around $250 billion.

The company blamed its low revenue on a "macroeconomic downturn" and "increased competition "and is planning to scale back expenses and transform its business in a more competitive digital advertising market.

The layoffs mark a turbulent new period for Silicon Valley, long known as a bastion of economic power and for being recession-proof. Companies in the heartland of the US' technology sector have laid off thousands of workers in recent months.

According to Crunchbase, a data provider, more than 50,000 tech personnel have been laid off this year.

One of the biggest downsizings happened at Twitter last week, when new owner Elon Musk cut roughly half the 7,500-member workforce.

Aggressive pandemic-era expansion is partly to blame. Meta increased its workforce by nearly 60 percent in 2020 and 2021. Facebook alone increased its headcount by 28 percent, to 87,314, in the 12 months ending in September, regulatory filings show.

"At the start of COVID, the world rapidly moved online, and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth," Zuckerberg wrote on Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."