Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is laying off five percent of its workforce, but also expediting the recruitment of machine learning engineers to fill AI roles.
Business Insider reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta recently unveiled plans to cut approximately five percent of its workforce, potentially resulting in nearly 4,000 employees losing their jobs. The company began informing affected workers via emails sent to employees across the US, Europe, and Asia on Monday. However, in the midst of these widespread layoffs, Meta is also accelerating the recruitment of machine learning engineers focused on AI.
Several Meta employees who claimed to have received favorable performance ratings in their mid-year reviews last year found themselves out of a job on Monday, despite the company’s claim that low performers were targeted by the cuts. Business Insider interviewed eight terminated employees who said they were given “At or Above Expectations” ratings — the middle tier in Meta’s three-level mid-year review system — in their 2024 assessments. These employees expressed surprise upon learning that their ratings had been lowered to “Meets Most,” one of the lower tiers in Meta’s year-end performance system.
Although Meta portrayed these cuts as targeting underperforming workers, internal guidance sent last month by Hillary Champion, Meta’s director of people experience, allowed managers to include employees from higher performance tiers if they couldn’t meet their reduction targets from lower-rated employees alone. Some employees said they were surprised by their inclusion in the cuts, as this guidance had previously only been shared with managers, not with the broader workforce.
One employee who said they were “unexpectedly” terminated posted documentation showing they had consistently met or exceeded expectations for four years before being downgraded to “Meets Most” in late 2024. Another employee reported being cut shortly after returning from parental leave, despite receiving an “At or Above Expectations” rating in early 2024. “I am super confused how I got terminated,” they wrote. “I still think this is an error.”
“The hardest part is Meta publicly stating they’re cutting low performers, so it feels like we have the scarlet letter on our backs,” another employee told BI. “People need to know we’re not underperformers.”
“I would certainly challenge Meta’s narrative about cutting only low performers,” another affected employee said. “I have a really, really difficult time believing I was a low performer based on past feedback I was given by my manager.”
Meta commenced its year-end performance review process for 2024 in December, although most employees won’t learn their final ratings until the coming weeks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to optimize Meta’s workforce as the company invests billions into artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The cuts could become an annual occurrence as Meta aims to regularly trim what it considers its lowest performers.
In an internal memo announcing the cuts, Zuckerberg stated that he had “decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.” Zuckerberg also mentioned that Meta would be backfilling these roles this year, signaling the company’s emphasis on hiring engineers in the coming weeks. Peng Fang, VP of engineering for monetization, shared a post on Meta’s internal forum Workplace on Friday, stressing the need to “hire many engineers in 2025.” Fang highlighted the company’s requirement to fill business-critical roles, with a particular focus on machine learning engineers.
During Meta’s most recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg informed investors that AI would be crucial to the company’s revenue strategy. Meta is projected to spend $65 billion on AI this year, underlining the significance of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the company’s future plans.
Read more at Business Insider here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
