Facebook to Hammer Workers Again

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 19, 7:30AM EDT

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Facebook to Hammer Workers Again — © Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Facebook is preparing to lay off more people. More accurately, Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META | META Price Prediction) will. The prior layoffs were so popular with investors that it is time to do it again. It is the company’s policy of profit over people. (These are the industries laying off the most people.)
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Meta has already laid off 11,000 people, or 13% of the staff. According to Bloomberg, it is unclear how many will be in this next wave, but it will be in the thousands.
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Founder Mark Zuckerberg was under fire before he started the employee chopping process. His move into the metaverse, a set of products that created augmented reality, cost Meta billions of dollars but did not appear poised to make any money. Other tech firms with similar products have backed off the business as well.

The decision is one of convenience over imagination. Zuckerberg admitted he overhired. He did not admit that Meta has not created a new product in years, although it has bought some. Not all the acquisitions worked. Part of an enlarged or stable workforce would be a sign he has something for them to do. That is not the case.
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Meta has been good enough to tell employees that job cuts are coming. He said a series would be done in April and another in May.
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If Zuckerberg aims to increase Meta’s stock price, the effort has worked. Shares are up 81% this year, which has added billions of dollars to Meta’s market cap. Since Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder, he has become fabulously richer.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.