Facebook’s metaverse: Results from a Facebook CEO in the early 2023–2019 R’esultat Seen by Zuckerberg
Facebook-parent Meta is said to be planning the first significant layoffs in its history as the company grapples with a shrinking business and fears of a looming recession.
On a conference call last month to discuss its earnings results for the third quarter, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he expects the company to end 2023 “as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”
Meta’s core business has been hurt by Apple’s Privacy changes and tightened advertiser budgets. The company last month posted its second quarterly revenue decline and reported that its profit was cut in half from the prior year. The billions are primarily to blame for the drop in profitability. A new version of the internet, called the metaverse, is likely to be years away.
Meta’s market value has climbed to about $250 billion, which is a decrease of more than $1 trillion in less than a year. The stock of Meta opened more than 5% higher on Monday morning after reports of the job cuts.
The tech sector is still open, but investors are looking to make more money by investing in new tech companies. The case of Facebook, AMAZON, and Monomi Park
Last week, the tech industry was in turmoil after Musk decided to lay off half of his workforce. The platform is not the only company downsizing. This week brought cuts at Salesforce and Meta, which eliminated 11,000 jobs, or 13 percent of its workforce. Around 3,000 workers were recently laid off by the payments company and other companies.
Last week, two companies said they were cutting their staffs: payment-processing firm Stripe and the rideshare company Lyft. On the same day, AMAZON said it was pausing corporate hiring.
Facebook-rival Twitter made sweeping cuts across the company on Friday under its new owner, Elon Musk. The cuts had an impact on the ethical artificial intelligence, search and public policy team.
In the last few days, Twitter has said that it would like laid off employees to come back.
Layoffs.fyi says that over 118,000 people in the tech industry have lost their jobs this year. At the same time, companies including Amazon and Apple have slowed or frozen their hiring, reducing the number of open roles in Big Tech that can soak up people suddenly out of work. Tech workers can still find new jobs, and the outlook remains strong. Their skills are still in demand, and their peers have responded to recent cuts with a wave of grassroots support to help laid-off workers find new jobs.
Big Tech is just one of many niches in the tech industry. Many smaller firms and companies in adjacent industries are still hiring tech workers, albeit at slower rates than tech giants recently did, and potentially for lower salaries. Some companies are looking to attract people who used to be dominated by recruiters from the largest companies.
Julia Pollak of ZipRecruiter says that the workers are at a huge advantage. “There is still strong demand for tech talent in a wide range of industries, from government to retail to agriculture. Those industries have been destroyed over the years.
The Big Tech forced exodus is opening new opportunities for startups and investors. Nick Popovich, CEO of an independent gaming studio, said that Monomi Park is hiring people who were affected by the Meta layoffs. Day One was able to respond to Big Tech by launching a scheme for laid off workers to invest $100,000 in new companies. PitchBook, which tracks startup data, recently estimated that VCs have about $290 billion on hand to invest, suggesting there’s plenty of funding available for new entrepreneurs.
For more than two decades, the U.S. tech industry has been a reliable source of booming stocks and cushy, high-paid jobs. In the span of weeks, the sheen has faded and the ax has fallen.
First, they hired a lot of employees during the pandemic, when people were extremely online. Now, the internet boom has faded, offline life has picked up, and those new employees seem too expensive.
Second, broader economic wobbles have caused brands to be less willing to spend on digital ads. High interest rates have put an end to the cheap-money era of venture capital.
Amazon’s massive layoffs in the metaverse: Amazon vs. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his decision to quit Twitter
The devices division is said to be a focus of the cuts, as well as the retail and human resources divisions.
Earlier this month, the company announced a hiring freeze on corporate jobs. “We’re facing an unusual macro-economic environment, and want to balance our hiring and investments with being thoughtful about this economy,” wrote Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology.
The layoffs come as the company has invested billions in the so-called metaverse, pitched as a virtual-reality future in which people will work, mingle, exercise and go to concerts. But it’s an unproven bet on the future, and not all everyone is convinced it should be the social media company’s focus.
Zuckerberg said the workforce cuts would affect the whole organization, with recruiting staff disproportionately affected due to fewer hires anticipated in the coming year. In the first quarter of 2020 a hiring freeze will continue.
Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bought the social media platform at the end of October and wasted no time slashing its workforce. He immediately ousted the company’s leadership, including its CEO, CFO, and top lawyer. Mass layoffs were announced on November 4, with about 50% of the staff cut.
His short tenure at the top of Twitter has been marked by hasty changes quickly halted, including his plan for a revamped Twitter Blue verification service, which charged $8 a month to get a blue checkmark on one’s account. Accounts impersonating celebrities, major corporations, and Musk himself proliferated immediately, spurring Twitter to halt Twitter Blue signups twice within a week.
The company’s head of content moderation and safety, as well as the company’s chief privacy officer and compliance officer resigned last week.
The CEO said that he and his brother made two very consequential mistakes, being too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth, and growing Stripe’s operating costs too quickly.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/14/1136659617/tech-layoffs-amazon-meta-twitter
The Fall of Zillow, Snapchat, and Robinhood: How Million Employees Disappear in a Big Loss in One Year?
There are a number of shocks that we are facing, such as inflation, energy shocks and interest rates. All of the developed world appears to be headed for a recession. We think that a different economic climate will arise in the years to come.
NPR was told that their sales performance process drives accountability. We support those who leave the business through their transition.
300 employees of Zillow were laid off last month, according to a report. The company laid off 25% of its workforce a year ago as it shuttered its instant buying service.
At the end of August, the company behind Snapchat said that it was cutting its workforce. The layoffs affected some 1,200 employees, with the company’s full-time workforce about 6,400 as of June.
Robinhood, the brokerage app company, laid off 23% of its workforce in August. According to a new report, that number amounted to over 800 employees. The company had already reduced its staff by 9% in April. “This did not go far enough,” wrote Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.