Facebook parent company Meta has laid off over 11,000 of its talented employees in its bid to downsize the team to about 13 per cent.

The company has also frozen its hiring apart from cutting its expenditure.

Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced the massive layoffs in a statement he issued on Monday that bore the devastating news to a section of the company’s employees.

This comes as the social media giant, which is among the most popular social media platforms in the world is facing a steep decline in its revenue.

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go,” Zuckerberg said.

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“We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1.”

Zuckerberg explained that the decline in revenue stemmed from the assumption that there would be a permanent acceleration in revenue growth occasioned by the rapid movement online because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, that was an oversight, as things did not turn out as expected because not only did online commerce revert to prior trends but there were also the matters of macroeconomic downturn, stiff competition and ad signal loss.

The CEO acknowledged that it was his fault and took full responsibility for the situation.

“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,” Zuckerberg said.

“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.”

Apart from the decline in revenues, Zuckerberg also said Meta made the move because the company wants to ensure efficient operations across its platforms.

“Fundamentally, we’re making all these changes for two reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we’re operating efficiently across both Family of Apps and Reality Labs,” the CEO said.

Meta has fired its employees when other tech firms are also downsizing, cutting costs, with the most recent one being Twitter, which also sent over half of its employees packing.

Another social media tech firm known as Snap, which owns Snapchat also fired a fifth of its workforce.