Information about Meta’s plan to fire a series of unproductive employees was posted by Bloomberg on January 14 based on an internal memo of the group.
According to AFP, Meta confirmed the above plan and said that General Director Mark Zuckerberg’s decision will affect 5% of the group’s workforce. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. As of September 2024, Meta has about 72,400 employees.
Meta is about to lay off 3,600 low-performing employees
“I decided to raise performance management standards and remove poor performers more quickly,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.
The leader said that the staff reduction is based on productivity to ensure the company has “the strongest talent” and can “attract new people to work”.
Performance-based layoffs are common practice in large American corporations. Last week, Microsoft announced similar layoffs, affecting less than 1% of its workforce, Business Insiderreported.
The dismissal takes place in the context of Meta’s larger changes ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20.
Mr. Zuckerberg recently had dinner with Mr. Trump and nominated a Republican to be Meta’s head of public relations.
Last week, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of Facebook’s fake news checking program after the program faced criticism from conservatives who considered it censorship. Under the new system, users will be able to add context to posts, similar to features on billionaire Elon Musk’s social network X.
Meta has also scaled back diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, especially against certain forms of hate speech.
