Meta Is Laying Off Thousands

Meta plans to fire thousands of workers who represent the 5% "lowest performers" across its 72,000-strong global workforce. Anticipating an "intense year," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday he wants "the best people on our teams" and opted to "move out low-performers faster" than the company's usual performance management system would allow, per the Guardian. Some 3,600 workers could be let go. Affected employees in the US will be informed by Feb. 10, and would receive "generous severance." Meta said it would hire new people to fill the vacant roles later this year.

"We typically manage out people who aren't meeting expectations over the course of a year," Zuckerberg said, per Bloomberg."But now we're going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle." This follows Meta's move to eliminate third-party fact-checkers, update its hateful conduct policies to allow women to be described as property and transgender people as "it," and most recently, the termination of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, per CNN. During Friday's episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, Zuckerberg said the changes were in the works "for a long time." (More Meta stories.)