Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September it had amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totalling 87,314 people. But on Wednesday, the company — now renamed Meta — began cutting jobs, and deeply. Meta said it was laying off more than 11,000, or about 13 per cent of its workforce, in what amounted to the company’s most significant job cuts. The layoffs were made across departments, though some areas, such as recruiting, were affected more than others.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to employees. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.” On Tuesday, Zuckerberg met executives to discuss the layoffs, two people who took part in the meeting said. One person who was present said the chief executive took responsibility for the cuts, saying his company had scaled up too quickly.

Meta had also cancelled travel plans for employees to ensure they were available to meet managers, should their team be affected by layoffs, three other people said. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Zuckerberg’s meeting with executives on Tuesday. For years, Meta had been a powerhouse company, growing rapidly as Facebook accumulated more users and bought companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

Not even scrutiny over its data privacy practices and the toxic content on its apps could dent its financial performance, as its stock continued climbing and its revenues soared. At one point last year, Meta was valued at $1 trillion. In July, Zuckerberg warned employees that the company was experiencing “one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history” and, in September announced a hiring freeze. Last month, he warned that “teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year.”

” India impact The India employees of Meta have been thrown off-guard by the move. While no country-specific numbers have yet been disclosed, Meta’s India staff are looking for clues on their future. Meta has an estimated 300- 400 employees in India. The smallest team of 60-plus is with WhatsApp. “We are not providing details on specific team impact,” Meta India said in response to an email seeking comments on country-specific impact. Earlier this month, Meta India head Ajit Mohan resigned from the company to join rival Snap from February.

(New York Times News Service; with inputs from PTI)