Thousands of Meta employees are set to be made redundant as CEO Mark Zuckerberg cuts roughly 5% of its staff.
While the cuts are being positioned as performance-based terminations, Zuckerberg said in an internal memo that this is going to be “an intense year” and that he wants “to make sure we have the best people in our team.”
As of September, Meta which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp employed around 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could result in 3,600 jobs lost.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster,” said Zuckerberg in the memo.
“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle, with the intention of back filling these roles in 2025.”
Zuckerberg noted that all those who didn’t meet expectations recently won’t be shown the door, provided the company is confident in their future performance.
And for those who are let go, he said that the company would “provide generous severance in line with what we provided with previous cuts.”
Those within the US affected by the cuts will be notified by February 10, whereas those outside of the US impacted by the decision will be notified later.
In Australia, Meta has offices in Sydney and Melbourne, and it’s yet unclear whether the cuts will affect its local workforce.
In a note to managers, Zuckerberg said that the latest round of cuts are aimed at ensuring the company has the “strongest talent” and is able to “bring new people in”, reported Bloomberg.
Meta expects its headcount to be down 10% by the end of the current performance cycle – with the latest cuts adding on to the additional 5% reduction from attrition last year.
Apart from Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are also believed to be in the midst of undertaking performance-based reviews to determine whether some of their employees should be asked to leave.