SAN FRANCISCO — Meta plans to lay off up to 5% of its employees based on performance ratings, according to an internal memo to workers on Tuesday viewed by The New York Times.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said in the memo. “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 said in the memo that workers whose roles were cut would be replaced by new hires in 2025.
The layoffs came 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 police certain types of hate speech, including allowing users of its apps to suggest that LGBTQ identities are rooted in mental illness.
Meta also said it would stop fact-checking 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 Trump has criticized Meta and other tech companies for what he describes as censorship of conservative viewpoints.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the layoffs. Bloomberg earlier reported on the cuts.
Last week, Zuckerberg said the company was terminating its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, effective immediately. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, Zuckerberg also said that “masculine energy, I think, is good.”
“It’s like, you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that that’s all good. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung toward being this somewhat more neutered thing.”
In Meta’s internal company 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 is looking for?” one employee asked.
In a separate memo to managers viewed by the Times, Meta said that the cuts were to ensure the company had the “strongest talent” working at the company, and that it would give Meta the ability to hire new workers. Managers were also told that those laid off would receive “generous” severance packages.
The changes coincide with Zuckerberg’s broader push to remake his company for the Trump era and protect Meta from the threat of regulation by forging closer bonds with the incoming administration.
Last year, Zuckerberg made his first visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and he has embraced working with the administration on fighting against what he describes as unduly harsh regulation in the European Union and other overseas markets.
Zuckerberg also plans to attend Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, according to two people familiar with his plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And he will co-host a black-tie reception for the incoming president that evening, along with Republican megadonors Miriam Adelson and Tilman Fertitta, according to a copy of the invitation shared with the Times.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on Zuckerberg’s political activities.
Meta has more than 72,000 employees, according to its latest earnings report, and the cuts Zuckerberg announced Tuesday would eliminate about 3,600 people.
The cuts also represent Meta’s first major culling since 2023, when Zuckerberg embarked upon what he called the “year of efficiency,” a move to thin his workforce after years of what he said was “over hiring” during the pandemic. Zuckerberg pressured managers across departments to set higher performance goals to weed out low performers, resulting in Meta’s cutting roughly one-third of its overall workforce in 2023.
Still, Meta’s ranks have grown. Zuckerberg has aimed to replace many of those employees with new hires focused on artificial intelligence, as Meta and other big tech companies focus on developing chatbots and other AI-powered services.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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