Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is cutting about 3600 employees (5%) of staff, saying he is out to increase performance standards at the tech giant.
“Low performance” workers will be out the door almost instantly.
They will have their computer access cut within an hour of being notified, with little time to preen their LinkedIn profiles in the search for their next job.
Business Insider has obtained a post on the company’s internal workplace forum which details the process. It includes severance packages.
The bulk of impacted staff are expected to be notified via their work and personal email accounts when the workday resumes in the US on Monday.
Staff outside the US are expected to be notified later.
“For teams that have a teammate or manager exit on Monday, I understand this might be a difficult day, and there could be some disruption and short-term impacts on your day-to-day work,” said Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources.
Ongoing Meta staff can work from home on Monday.
Performance-based staff retrenchments appear to be a growing trend in big tech, with Meta, Tesla, Cisco Systems, Google, Twitter and Alphabet among those cutting thousands of staff in what are tighter economic conditions.
However, jobs in big tech face being consumed by the sector’s own success, with AI tipped to replace some developer jobs at tech firms, along with millions of jobs worldwide.
In an interview reported by Forbes in January this year, Mark Zuckerberg said he believed AI can take over coding tasks, allowing human engineers to focus on higher-level problem-solving and creativity.
It means much software development will be automated.
Zuckerberg believes AI will replace mid-level engineers this year, according to the article.
Then there’s fact checking. Exactly a month ago, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would stop fact-checking posts on its platforms.
That mainly impacted staff working at contracted companies. But it’s another indicator of the tightening employment climate in the big tech sector.
