Meta: Zuckerberg wants to dismiss "low performers"

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to lay off 5 percent of the workforce. In particular, the employees who perform the least are to be made redundant. Zuckerberg announced this in an internal memo to his staff on Tuesday. The notifications regarding the redundancies are to be sent to employees by February 10.

Around 5 percent of Meta's 72,400 employees are to lose their jobs. However, Zuckerberg did not give any specific figures in the message to the company's employees, which was published by the US tech magazine The Verge, among others. The reason given by the Meta boss for the redundancies was that the company is working on important technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), VR glasses and the future of social media and only needs the best employees for this. Zuckerberg said that he expects an “intense year”.

Accordingly, performance management is to be set higher. “Normally, we part ways with employees who don't meet expectations over the course of a year, but now we will make more extensive performance-related cuts during this cycle, intending to filling these positions again in 2025,” Zuckerberg wrote. However, not every “low performer” will be let go immediately. If there is a good performance prognosis for an employee, they can remain with the company.

All dismissed employees will receive a severance payment, which Zuckerberg says will be generous. It will be based on the severance payments that have been paid to date.

Mixed reactions from employees

Meta employees reacted promptly to their boss's announcement in an internal forum, according to the news portal Business Insider, which was able to view the forum. Some employees spoke out in favor of the increase in performance standards, while others wanted to know more details about how the cuts would actually come about. There is also the question of how performance is to be assessed. Employees are also concerned about whether the redundancies are really performance-related, or whether economic considerations also play a role.

Janelle Gale, Vice President of Human Resources at Meta, promised that the employees' questions would be clarified in a FAQ. The FAQ will also describe the process of how the performance evaluation will be carried out in detail.

Meta had already cut around 21,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023. That was just under a quarter of the workforce at the time. The planned redundancies are the highest since then.

(olb)