Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September, it amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people. But today (Nov. 9), the company — now renamed Meta — began cutting jobs, and deeply. Laying off over 11,000 employees, the move comes amid a tough time for Facebook’s parent company, which provided lukewarm guidance in late October for its upcoming fourth quarter earnings that startled investors and caused its shares to sink nearly 20 percent. This is an unfortunate time for those laid off but apparently, Zuckerberg did what he felt he had to do.

The staff got word earlier today through a letter from the CEO. “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 percent and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go,” he said. “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. I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Zuckerberg continued: “I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go. Overall, this will add up to a meaningful cultural shift in how we operate. For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to desk sharing for people who already spend most of their time outside the office. We’ll roll out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months.”

We will see how Mark Zuckerberg and the tech giant turn things around in the years to come.