Zuckerberg tells thousands of Meta staff he will cut them for being ‘low performers’
Meta boss reportedly told staff that the company was looking to ‘move out low-performers faster’.
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook and CEO of its parent company Meta, told staff on Tuesday that it plans to cut its “low performers” sooner than expected, which could amount to five percent of staff, according to a new report.
In an internal memo, obtained by Bloomberg, Mr Zuckerberg told staff he “decided to raise the bar on performance management” in order to “move out low-performers faster”.
Meta employs over 70,000 people, meaning that almost 4,000 could be at risk of losing their jobs. Mr Zuckerberg said the jobs would be “backfilled” later in the year.
According to the memo, Zuckerberg said the company typically “manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year” but was now planning on “more extensive performance-based cuts” sooner.
Meta is said to have already cut about the same number of of low performers during 2024, but has a target of 10 percent for its current “performance cycle”, which meant it was looking to “exit approximately another five percent of our current employees”.
Zuckerberg said Meta would “provide generous severance”.
The policy is the latest in a time of dramatic change at the tech giant, following its announcement last week that it was stopping its use of fact-checkers, starting in the U.S., and moving to a Community Notes system similar to X because fact-checkers were “politically biased”.
Zuckerberg said it was also stripping back its automated content moderation systems as it was removing too much content and this amounted to “censorship”, with the changes aiming to restore “free expression” on its platforms. The move has been widely condemned by online safety campaigners, who have warned it will allow misinformation and harmful content to spread on Meta platforms.
In addition, the company has since said it would end its diversity, equality and inclusion programmes, and while appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg said companies needed more “masculine energy”.
The drastic change in stance and rhetoric from the company and Zuckerberg is seen as an attempt to curry favour with President-elect Donald Trump, who has previously accused social media platforms of censoring him and called for more free speech to be allowed online.
Trump has had a fractious relationship with Meta and other social media sites in the past – the platform banned him in 2021 over his incitment of the January 6 rioters but Meta, along with other sites including Elon Musk’s X, has since allowed him to return.
Since winning the November presidential election, a number of other key figures in Silicon Valley have also made efforts to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Apple boss Tim Cook all said to have met with, spoken to, or donated to the inauguration of the president-elect.