Meta to lay off 5% of workforce over low performance

Meta has announced plans to lay off approximately five percent of its workforce.

The move, outlined in a memo obtained by Bloomberg, is part of a broader strategy to raise performance standards as the company gears up for what Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, described as an “intense year”.

In the memo, Zuckerberg highlighted Meta’s dedication to developing transformative technologies and shared the company’s goal of building teams with the brightest talent.

He added that the company’s updated performance management approach will accelerate the process of addressing low performance.

“Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies of the world. AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social media. This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams,” the memo reads.

“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.”

Meta has more than 72,000 employees, according to its most recent quarterly report.

In a report by CNBC, an unnamed director at the company confirmed that the latest reduction expected to be completed by February 10, 2025, will affect about 3,600 employees.

The decision also comes amid significant operational shifts at Meta.

On January 7, Zuckerberg announced plans to replace third-party fact-checkers with a community notes system, similar to Elon Musk’s X platform, and to reinstate more political content on the platform.

The tech mogul had also revealed plans for artificial intelligence (AI) to take over the roles of mid-level software engineers at Meta.