Meta begins firing ‘lowest performing’ staff

Meta has begun conducting company-wide layoffs starting from Monday February 10, cutting “lowest performing” employees as it prepares for an “intense year”, according to an internal memo leaked to Reuters from the tech giant’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg. 

The job cuts will focus on employees that rated “met some” or “did not meet” in their performance reviews. Managers were instructed to place 12%-15% of employees in these lower performance categories.

Notices were scheduled to be sent out from 5:00am local time in the US while staff in other countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa would receive notifications between 11 and 18 February. Employees in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands will be exempt due to local labour regulations. 

Meta reportedly plans to cut nearly 5% of its workforce based on performance. Currently, Meta employs about 72,000 people globally which means that approximately 3,600 employees would be affected by this decision. 

The company is also expediting hiring for machine learning engineers and other ‘business-critical’ engineering roles between 11 February and 13 March. 

While performance-based job cuts are common in the US, they would normally unfold over the course of a year at Meta but Zuckerberg has decided to accelerate the process this year. He added that affected employees will receive “generous severance." 

Zuckerberg said in the internal memo: “This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams. I've decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster.” 

This decision comes as part of Meta’s wider focus on AI and efficiency as part of Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency” initiative. 

Other big moves include Meta’s Reality Labs division being integrated more closely with the company’s main business, the Messenger team merging with Facebook, and its former head, Loredana Crisan, moving to the Generative AI group.

Campaign has reached out to Meta Asia for comment. This story first appeared on Performance Marketing World.