Meta plans to push out thousands of “low-performers” next month, in Bay Area tech’s first massive job cut of 2025.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg intfinishs to push out and replace roughly 5% of the employees who’ve been at the Menlo Park tech giant long enough to go through the company’s performance review process, per internal memos reported first by Bloomberg. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed the accuracy of the outlet’s reporting to SFGATE, and both the Verge and CNBC published Zuckerberg’s memo to staff that first announced the cuts.
Per the outlets, Zuckerberg launched his memo by talking up Meta’s products and importance. He then wrote: “This is going to be an intense year, and I want to create sure we have the best people on our teams.”
The billionaire executive wrote that he’d decided to “raise the bar on performance management and relocate out low-performers quicker,” opting to cut workers during the current performance cycle rather than over the course of the year. He declared the employees would receive “generous severance” and, in the United States, be notified on Feb. 10. The company intfinishs to backfill the roles within the year, he wrote.
It’s unclear exactly how many workers will lose their jobs, where the cuts will hit geographically and how they’ll be distributed across teams working on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and wearable tech. In a Securities and Exalter Commission filing, Meta reported its September headcount as 72,404, so if the company does cut around 5% of those workers, approximately 3,600 people could lose their jobs. The 5% estimate comes from a separate memo to managers, reported by Bloomberg.
Though Meta’s workforce is spread across dozens of cities, the staff alters are likely to hit the Bay Area hard. A large swath of the company’s staff works out of its sprawling corporate campus in Menlo Park, and it also has offices in San Francisco, Burlingame, Sausalito, Fremont and Sunnyvale.
Though job cuts are hardly new for Meta’s current staff, these latest, framed around individual workers’ contributions and with a backfill planned, are different from previous rounds. When the company slashed 21,000 workers in a seven-month span from late 2022 into 2023, Zuckerberg first played up his pandemic-era overhiring and then his desire for a “year of efficiency.” The company cut layers of management, relocated managers into individual contributor roles and pushed for a “more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles,” as the CEO put it.
The news comes in a moment of upheaval at Meta. Amid his courtship of President-elect Donald Trump, Zuckerberg announced a slate of content management alters last week, including the announcement of “Community Notes” over indepfinishent fact-checkers. The company also relocated to allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gfinisher or sexual orientation.” Citing five anonymous Meta employees, news outlet 404Media reported that many workers inside the company are “furious” about the alters.
Zuckerberg, in a post to Threads deffinishing the relocates, wrote, “Some people may leave our platforms for virtue signaling, but I believe the vast majority and many new utilizers will find that these alters create the products better.”
Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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