Meta To Cut 5 Percent Of Staff Ahead Of ‘Intense’ Year

Meta Platforms is reportedly about to carry out another tranche of layoffs among its employees, ahead of an “intense” 2025.

CNBC reported that it had gained access to an internal memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that was posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum on Tuesday.

In the memo, Zuckerberg reportedly informed staff about the decision to “move out low performers faster”, which would see Meta axed about 5 percent of its workforce.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Image credit: Meta
Image credit: Meta

More cuts

Zuckerberg also reportedly told employees 2025 will “be an intense year.”

“Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies of the world. AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social media,” Zuckerberg reportedly wrote. “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,” he reportedly wrote. “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, with the intention of back filling these roles in 2025.”

“We won’t manage out everyone who didn’t meet expectations for the last period if we’re optimistic about their future performance, and for those we do let go, we’ll provide generous severance in line with what we provided with previous cuts,” he added.

The company also specified that it is “exiting approximately 5 percent of our lowest performers” in a separate message posted by a company director, CNBC noted.

Meta’s most recent quarterly report revealed the tech giant currently has more than 72,000 employees.

Layoffs of 5 percent translates to approximately 3,600 jobs being axed.

Meta said US employees affected by the layoffs will be notified by 10 February.

Staff in the rest of the world will find out later.

Previous cuts

The confirmation that fresh job losses are on the way will come as a bitter blow for Meta’s workforce, as the firm had already axed nearly a quarter of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023.

It began when Zuckerberg had promised investors that 2023 would be a “year of efficiency”, amid investor concern after a tough 2022.

In November 2022 Meta cut about 13 percent of its employees, or roughly 11,000 jobs.

But that was not the end of it.

In March 2023 CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed staff that he had made the “difficult decision” to axe another 10,000 positions, pushing the total layoffs to around 21,000 staff.

But even that was not the end of the job losses at Meta.

In April 2023 the firm confirmed it had begun laying off technical staff‘; in May 2023 it also axed hundreds of jobs at its international headquarters in Ireland; and then in October 2023 Meta axed an undisclosed number of staff at it is Metaverse-oriented Reality Labs Unit.

Then in October 2024 Meta reportedly began laying off employees across various departments, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, but there was no confirmation of actual numbers.

Trump adjustment

Mark Zuckerberg has been carrying out a number of controversial changes at Meta in the past few weeks, as the firm seeks to build closer ties with the incoming Donald Trump administration.

Last week, Zuckerberg shocked the industry when he announced Meta would end its third-party fact-checking program in favour of a “Community Notes” model used on Elon Musk’s platform X, where individual users (instead of fact-checkers) provide more context to posts.

That move triggered a backlash from the European Union, Meta staff, as well as the co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board, the independent body that reviews Facebook and Instagram content.

Brazil meanwhile demanded clarity on how Meta’s fact-checking policy will apply to the country and said it could take “legal and judicial” measures against the company if it does not respond to an extrajudicial notice on the matter.

Tom Jowitt

Tom Jowitt is a leading British tech freelancer and long standing contributor to Silicon UK. He is also a bit of a Lord of the Rings nut...

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