Large scale layoffs coming at Facebook's parent company Meta: report
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New York (PTI): After job cuts at Twitter, Facebook's parent company Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week in what could be the largest reduction to date at a "major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment," a media report said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the layoffs at Meta, which has more than 87,000 employees, are expected to affect "many thousands of employees" and could come as soon as Wednesday.
The WSJ report said that company officials have told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week.
The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company's 18-year history. While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company's staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment," it said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the company would focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas.
So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year, Zuckerberg had said on the company's third-quarter earnings call last month. In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.
Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here, Zuckerberg had told employees at a companywide meeting at the end of June.
The layoffs at Meta come just days after Twitter's new owner Elon Musk cut the company's workforce by half following his acquisition of the social media site.
The WSJ reported that Meta had gone on a hiring spree during the pandemic as life and business shifted more online. Meta added more than 27,000 employees in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 combined and added a further 15,344 in the first nine months of this year about one-fourth of that during the most recent quarter.
Meta, whose stock has fallen more than 70 per cent this year, has highlighted deteriorating macroeconomic trends, but investors have also been spooked by its spending and threats to the company's core social-media business.
Growth for that business in many markets has stalled amid stiff competition from TikTok, and Apple Inc.'s requirement that users opt into the tracking of their devices has curtailed the ability of social media platforms to target ads, it said.
The report added that much of Meta's ballooning costs stem from Zuckerberg's commitment to Reality Labs, which is a division of the company responsible for virtual- and augmented-reality headsets as well as the creation of the metaverse. Zuckerberg has billed the "metaverse as a constellation of interlocking virtual worlds in which people will eventually work, play, live and shop, the WSJ reported.
The effort has cost the company USD 15 billion since the beginning of last year. But despite investing heavily in promoting its virtual-reality platform, Horizon Worlds, users have been largely unimpressed, it said.
I get that a lot of people might disagree with this investment, Zuckerberg had told analysts on the company's earnings call last month. I think people are going to look back on decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.
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West Asia: India supplied 22,000 MT of high-speed diesel to Bangladesh in March, says MEA
New Delhi (PTI): Amid the ongoing West Asia conflict, India has supplied 22,000 metric tonnes of high-speed diesel to Bangladesh in March and has received a request from Seychelles and the Maldives to meet their energy requirements, the MEA said on Friday.
At his weekly briefing, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal in his response to a query related to requests received from India's neighbouring countries for fuel amid the West Asia situation, also said that India is "finalising a government-to-government agreement" for the supply of oil and gas, which will play an important role in reinforcing energy security of Mauritius.
The conflict in West Asia has now stretched to nearly 50 days, with global ramifications.
"So, we have received requests from our neighbouring countries for supply of fuel, and these are being looked into, keeping in mind our own requirements, availability and refining capacity," Jaiswal told reporters.
He further said India has "supplied 22,000 metric tonnes of high-speed diesel to Bangladesh in March 2026, and further supplies have continued this month as well".
"You would recall that last month we had supplied 38 metric tonnes of petroleum products to Sri Lanka as well," he added.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Mauritius last week, the MEA spokesperson said, adding, "We are finalising a government-to-government agreement for supply of oil and gas, which will play an important role in reinforcing the energy security of Mauritius".
As far as Nepal is concerned, there is an existing arrangement between Indian Oil Corporation and Nepal Oil Corporation to supply petroleum products to Nepal as per its requirements. The supplies are continuing without any interruption, he said.
Energy supplies to Bhutan also continue according to the existing arrangement.
"As I had mentioned earlier, we have received a request from Seychelles and the Maldives to meet their energy requirements. We continue to be in touch with them in this regard, and are considering the request keeping in mind our own domestic requirements and availability of fuel.
"I would also like to add that our neighbouring country governments have expressed appreciation for the uninterrupted supply, fuel supply to them during the West Asian conflict," Jaiswal said.
Global oil and gas prices surged after Iran restricted the transit of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow lane between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that handles roughly 20 per cent of global oil and LNG trade.
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