Meta to cut roughly 5% of staff, targeting lowest performers

Zuckerberg had declared 2023 the company’s “year of efficiency” and announced plans then to eliminate 10,000 positions

Meta Platforms Inc. is cutting roughly 5% of its staff through performance-based eliminations and plans to hire new people to fill their roles this year, according to an internal memo sent to all employees.

As of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could affect roughly 3,600 jobs. “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in the note posted to an internal message board and reviewed by Bloomberg News.

“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,” he said, “but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

Zuckerberg had declared 2023 the company’s “year of efficiency” and announced plans then to eliminate 10,000 positions. He made it clear in his latest memo, however, that the performance-based cuts are aimed at accelerating Meta’s performance management process and that the roles would be backfilled in 2025.

In the same note, the CEO of Facebook’s parent company said he’s positioning the company for what he expects to be an “intense year” focused on AI, smart glasses and the future of social media.

Meta expects to reach 10% of “non-regrettable” attrition by the end of the current performance cycle, which includes roughly 5% of non-regrettable attrition from last year, according to a separate message sent to managers at the company. “This means we are aiming to exit approximately another 5% of our current employees who have been with the company long enough to receive a performance rating,” the company said.

Zuckerberg told employees that the company would “provide generous severance.” US-based employees affected are expected to be notified on Feb. 10, with those outside of the US notified at a later date.