Global Big Tech layoff wave hits Korea as Meta Korea joins the trend

Meta has become the latest global Big Tech firm to lay off employees in Korea under an aggressive corporate-wide restructuring program amid worldwide economic downturn.

Meta, an American multinational technology giant formerly known as Facebook, will begin sending out redundancy notices to employees at Meta Korea, according to IT industry sources on Thursday. There are about 100 employees working at Meta’s Korea office. Meta’s corporate-wide restructuring plan will likely be accompanied by a massive organizational reform.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg [Provided by AFP-Yonhap]

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday (local time in the U.S.). “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13 percent and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. 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 (first quarter),” said Zuckerberg.

It is Meta’s biggest layoff in its 18-year corporate history, and the largest dismissal from U.S. big-tech names.

The news comes just a few days after Elon Musk, CEO of electric vehicle giant Tesla who recently took over Twitter, fired about half of the workers at the Korean office of the global social media platform. The company has about 30 employees in South Korea.

In August, social media giant Snap announced it was laying off 20 percent of its staff, or about 1,000. Enterprise software firm Salesforce is also cutting hundreds of employees, starting this week.

By Hwang Soon-min and Cho Jeehyun