Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a memo to employees Wednesday, seen by Bloombergthat the company plans to cut about 5% of its workforce through performance-based layoffs.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reported about 72,000 employees at the end of last September during its third-quarter earnings call, so the cuts could affect about 3,600 positions.
In November 2022, the company implemented the first layoffs in 18 years of history like Facebook and Meta, laying off more than 11,000 of its approximately 87,000 employees.
Shortly after, in March 2023, the company announced 10,000 additional layoffs and the elimination of 5,000 open positions.
However, these two waves of layoffs were aimed at reducing staff, while in this case Meta confirmed to Axios that cuts are strictly based on performance and that vacant positions will be filled.
“I have decided to raise the bar on performance management and eliminate low performers more quickly,” Zuckerberg said in his memo, reported by Bloomberg. “We typically manage people who don’t meet expectations over the course of a year, but we will now make deeper reductions based on performance during this cycle.”
Bloomberg reported that only people who have worked at Meta long enough to be eligible for performance reviews will be affected, adding that U.S. workers will be notified if they are part of the reductions on February 10, and those based in other countries will find out at a later date.
Zuckerberg promised those affected “generous severance packages” in line with previous Meta job cuts, Bloomberg reported.
He added in the note that he expects the total workforce to decline by 10% by the end of the current performance cycle, between this round of layoffs and an additional 5% attrition from the same period last year.
