New York (CNN) — Meta is aiming to cut about 5% of what it calls its “lowest performers” with plans to backfill those roles later this year, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
Those jobs cuts could affect about 3,600 workers, based on Meta’s latest quarterly report citing a 72,000-strong workforce in September.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an internal memo viewed and first reported by Bloomberg. A company spokesperson confirmed the accuracy of Bloomberg’s report to CNN.
“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,” he continued, “but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”
The announcement comes during a period of turmoil and rapid policy changes by Zuckerberg. Two weeks ago, Meta replaced its top policy executive with a prominent Republican. And last week, the company announced it was ending its third-party fact-checking programs in the United States and changing its hateful conduct policies, allowing some new types of content on Meta-owned platforms that were previously banned. Some of that content includes referring to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the updated policy.
And just three days ago, Meta ended its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. That same day, Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming that he had been working on these company shifts “for a long time” and that the excessive content moderation and fact-checking “destroyed trust” on the platform.
“I kind of think in 2016 and the aftermath I gave too much deference to a lot of folks in the media who were basically saying ‘Okay, there was no way (Donald Trump) could’ve gotten elected except for misinformation. People can’t actually believe this stuff,’” Zuckerberg said.
Critics of these recent policy changes say they are being used to curry favor with President-elect Trump and the incoming government.
Meta has gone through major layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic. It laid off 11,000 employees in November 2022 and thousands more the following year.