Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Meta will cut around five per cent of its staff through performance-based terminations and will plan to hire new staff to fill their roles.
The Meta CEO and founder made the announcement in a note posted on an internal message board and was seen by Bloomberg News.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” wrote Zuckerberg.
As of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people—meaning around 3,600 staff around the world could get the chop.
“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,” continued Zuck, “but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”
Workers in the US will be informed whether they will be moved out on 10 February, those in other countries will be informed at a later date. Meta Australia had no comment when reached by B&T.
The terminations will only include staff who have been at the company long enough to be eligible for a performance review. Zuckerberg said Meta would “provide generous severance” in line with past cuts.
In a note to managers, he added that these performance-based cuts are meant to ensure Meta has the “strongest talent” and can “bring new people in”.
It’s unclear whether this has anything to do with recent announcements of cutting fact-checking because they were too “politically biased” or its rolling back of DE&I initiatives.
Over the last couple of years, Meta has been through a succession of job cuts. Zuckerberg billed 2023 as Meta’s “year of efficiency” and cut 10,000 jobs.
