Meta to lay off 5% of workforce, about 3,600 employees, in performance-based cuts

What just happened? Fresh from announcing that users will soon be able to say virtually anything they want on Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg has informed Meta employees that 5% of the workforce is being laid off. The CEO warned workers – those that aren't being let go – that 2025 will "be an intense year."

According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg made the announcement via a company memo posted on the company's internal Workplace forum this week.

Zuckerberg wrote that the decision was designed to "move out low performers faster." In a separate message posted by a company director, it was confirmed that 5% of Meta's lowest performers were being laid off. According to its most recent figures, Meta has more than 72,500 employees, so the 5% figure represents at least 3,625 people.

"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," Zuckerberg wrote in the memo.

Those being released by Meta will be replaced by new hires throughout 2025. Affected employees in the US will be notified on February 10.

Last week, Zuckerberg appeared on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, telling the host that Meta and other companies "will have AI" this year that is essentially a mid-level engineer capable of writing code. He added that eventually, a lot of code in apps will be built by AI instead of people. Business Insider notes that a mid-level engineer at Meta earns a salary somewhere in the mid-six figures.

Zuckerberg's talk of replacing lower-performing workers appears to be another imitation of what Elon Musk has done at X. Musk famously told staff to agree to become part of the new "hardcore" Twitter 2.0 work culture or be fired – an ultimatum that saw one former employee awarded $602,640 at an unfair dismissal case.

Zuckerberg referenced X directly this week when he announced a free speech push for Facebook and Instagram. Meta is, among other things, getting rid of "politically biased" third-party fact checkers and replacing them with X-style community notes. It is also ceasing its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.

Meta has laid off more than 21,000 people since November 2022, with 10,000 cuts taking place in 2023, which Zuckerberg defined as the company's "year of efficiency."