Meta ‘plans to cut 5% of lowest performing staff’ as Zuckerberg ‘raises the bar’

Meta is planning to cut about 5% of staff it considers to be its lowest performers, it has been reported.

Bloomberg reported that an internal memo sent to staff by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he had “decided to raise the bar on performance management” in order to “move out low-performers faster”.

According to the memo, Mr 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 5% of low performers during 2024, but has a target of 10% for its current “performance cycle”, which meant it was looking to “exit approximately another 5% of our current employees who have been with the company long enough to receive a performance rating”.

In his note, Mr 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 US, and moving to a Community Notes system similar to X because fact-checkers were “politically biased”.

Mr 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, Mr Zuckerberg said companies needed more “masculine energy”.

The drastic change in stance and rhetoric from the company and Mr Zuckerberg is seen as an attempt to curry favour with incoming US president-elect Donald Trump, who has previously accused social media platforms of censoring him and called for more free speech to be allowed online.

Mr Trump has had a fractious relationship with Meta and other social media sites in the past – the platform banned him in 2021 over his incitement of the January 6 rioters but, 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.