Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would cut 5% of its workforce — as many 3,600 people — with a focus on staff who “aren’t meeting expectations,” Bloomberg News first reported in mid-January.
Meta Platforms, on Monday, kickstarted the process to terminate “low-performing” employees by notifying the job cuts as it scours for new talent to dominate the AI race.
Meta notified laid-off employees via email and is providing severance packages to US-based staff, according to Bloomberg News, citing confidential sources. The severance includes 16 weeks of base pay, plus an additional two weeks for each year of service. Employees eligible for performance bonuses will still receive them, and stock awards will be granted as part of the upcoming vesting cycle later this month, the report added.
Reports say several employees who received positive ratings for their performance during the mid-year reviews were also handed pink slips. These employees were shocked to see their ratings being downgraded to “Meets Most” during the year-end reviews from “At or Above Expectations”, making them eligible for the job cuts.
Kaila Curry, who worked as a Content Manager at Meta’s San Francisco office, according to her LinkedIn profile, was one of the employees who was rated “exceeds expectations” rating in her mid-year review and was let go on Monday.
“I was placed on a project that multiple managers admitted had me ‘not set up for success’. I frequently asked for feedback and was always told I was doing a good job. I was never placed on a PIP, never given corrective feedback, and never properly mentored or provided clear expectations,” she said in her LinkedIn post sharing the news.
Another employee Brittney Ball, who worked at the company for five years, according to her LinkedIn profile, was also laid off on the same day.
CNBC-TV18 has reached out to Meta for a comment on the layoffs and is awaiting a response.
A Business Insider report stated that many laid-off employees shared their performance records on Workplace, the company’s internal communications platform. One employee, who described their termination as “unexpected”, posted documents showing they had consistently met or exceeded expectations for four years before being downgraded to “Meets Most” in late 2024. Another employee reported being laid off shortly after returning from parental leave, despite holding an “At or Above Expectations” rating earlier in 2024. CNBC-TV18 has not independently verified these messages.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would cut 5% of its workforce — as many as 3,600 people — with a focus on staff who “aren’t meeting expectations,” Bloomberg News first reported in mid-January. Affected US-based employees would be notified on February 10, while international employees could learn later, Zuckerberg said last month.
In a separate message to managers, the Facebook co-founder said the cuts would create a headcount for the company to hire the “strongest talent.”
Job cuts have been consistent at Meta in recent years. The company laid off thousands of employees in 2022 and 2023 as part of an efficiency push.
The latest wave of firings is expected to be completed by the end of the performance cycle that goes through February. They come as Meta seeks to beat out competitors including OpenAI and DeepSeek in a fast-moving artificial intelligence race.
Zuckerberg told investors in late January that Meta anticipates eventually spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure. The Menlo Park, California-based company is applying AI across its range of apps and business units, from social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to virtual reality glasses.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
Source-https://www.cnbctv18.com/education/meta-layoffs-employees-with-strong-reviews-among-those-hit-19556604.htm