Meta plans to lay off up to 5 percent of its employees based on performance reviews, according to an internal memo to employees Tuesday seen by The New York Times.
“I decided to raise the bar on performance management and weed out low performers faster,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said in the note. “Typically we manage people who don’t meet expectations over the course of a year, but now we’ll be making more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”
Mr. Zuckerberg said in the memo that the employees whose roles were cut will be replaced by new hires in 2025.
The layoffs come just days after Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation policies. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, said it would no longer promote certain types of hate speech, including allowing users of its apps to suggest that LGBTQ identities are rooted in mental diseases.
Meta also said it would stop censoring posts and promote political news in its Newsfeed, reversing several of its content moderation rules in preparation for the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has criticized Meta and other tech companies for what he describes as censorship of conservative views.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment on the layoffs. Bloomberg reported earlier on the cuts.
Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company is ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, effective immediately. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg also said that “male energy, I think, is good.”
“It’s like if you want female energy, you want male energy,” said Mr. Zuckerberg. “I think this is all good. But I think the corporate culture has tended to be a bit more sterile.”
On Meta’s company’s internal message boards, employees asked whether the cuts would target specific groups, such as the LGBTQ community or people of color.
“Given what we heard Mark say about DEI last week, do we think these cuts are coming for people who don’t have the masculine energy he’s looking for?” asked an employee.
In a separate memo to managers seen by the Times, Meta said the cuts were to ensure the company had the “strongest talent” working at the company and would give Meta the ability to hire new workers. Managers were also told that those made redundant would receive “generous” severance packages.
The changes coincide with a broader push by Mr. Zuckerberg to rebuild his company for the Trump era and protect Meta from the threat of regulation by forging closer ties with the incoming administration.
Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg made his first visit to Mar-a-Lago, the private club of Mr. Trump in Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the inaugural fund of Mr. Trump and has embraced working with the administration to fight what it describes as unduly harsh regulations in the European Union and other overseas markets.
Mr. Zuckerberg also plans to attend the inauguration of Mr. Trump on Jan. 20, according to two people familiar with his plans who spoke on condition of anonymity. And he will co-host a black-tie reception for the incoming president that evening, along with Republican bigwigs Miriam Adelson and Tilman Fertitta, according to a copy of the invitation shared with the Times.
A Meta spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Zuckerberg.
Meta has more than 72,000 employees, according to its latest earnings report, and the cuts announced by Mr. Zuckerberg on Tuesday will eliminate about 3,600 people.
The cuts also represent the first major Meta slaughter since 2023, when Mr. Zuckerberg began what he called a “year of efficiency,” a move to reduce his workforce after years of what he said was “over-hiring” during the pandemic. Mr. Zuckerberg pushed managers across divisions to set higher performance targets to weed out underperformers, leading Meta to cut about a third of its total workforce by 2023.
However, Meta’s ranks have grown. Mr. Zuckerberg aims to replace many of those employees with new AI-focused hires as Meta and other big tech companies focus on developing chatbots and other AI-powered services.
