Meta announces 5% cuts targeting low performers. Read the notice

Meta CNBC confirmed on Tuesday that it will cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing employees.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg employees were informed of the decision to “move out low performers faster” in a statement posted on the company’s internal Workplace forum on Tuesday. Zuckerberg told employees that 2025 is “going to be a busy year.”

The company specified that “approximately 5% of our lowest performers are exiting” in a separate message posted by a company executive. Meta has more than 72,000 employees, according to its latest quarterly report.

According to Meta, the workers affected by the layoffs will be notified by February 10 and will receive the severance pay according to the company’s previous payment. The cuts are Meta’s biggest layoffs since it cut 21,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023, or nearly a quarter of its workforce.

Bloomberg was the first to report the cuts, citing one internal memory.

The move follows several major operational changes within Meta aimed at building closer ties with the president-elect Donald Trump.

Last week, Zuckerberg announced Meta would end its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a “Community Notes” model in use Elon Musk’s X platform, where individual users provide more context to messages.

“The last election also feels like a cultural tipping point to once again prioritize speech, so we’re going back to our roots and reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platforms,” ​​Zuckerberg said. video ad

Below is Zuckeberg’s internal memo, obtained by CNBC.

Meta is building some of the most important technology in the world. AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social networks. This is going to be a busy year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.

I’ve decided to step up my performance management and get low performers out faster. We typically manage people who don’t meet expectations in one year, but now we’ll be making broader performance-based cuts throughout this cycle, with the goal of re-filling those roles in 2025. t handle all those who have not met expectations in the past, if we look forward to future performance, and let those we let go, in line with what was given with the previous restrictions, we will give them a generous release.

We will continue with further guidance for managers before the calibrations. Affected individuals outside the US will be notified on or after February 10th