During the dark days of the pandemic, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg made hay. With internet users across the world confined to their homes and phones, usage across his platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — soared, and he went on a hiring spree.

Between 2019 and 2022, the UK workforce of the Silicon Valley-based Meta swelled from 2,700 to just over 7,000 in a swashbuckling period of expansion.

• Facebook’s UK arm paid less tax on bigger profit

Then, reality began to bite. In the summer of 2022, as the world entered darker economic times and turbulence hit Meta’s all-important advertising business, Zuckerberg, 40, started to realise that Covid-era growth could not be sustained.

Over the rest of that year, and into 2023, Meta axed