Moving into the new year, Meta has made a move to lay off employees based on performance reviews: “getting rid of the lowest performers faster.” Mark Zuckerberg said 2025 will be “a stressful year.”
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| Meta lays off 5% of staff, focuses on the weakest |
Accordingly, 5% of the weakest employees will leave. This helps ensure the company has the best people to serve. Mark Zuckerberg also wants to recruit more, focusing on AI as Meta and other tech giants are racing to develop chatbots and AI-based services.
Meta had more than 72,000 employees in its most recent quarterly report, so the number of layoffs this time is about 3,600. The laid-off employees will receive notice on February 10 and will be compensated in the same way as before.
Compared to previous layoffs, the cuts in early 2025 are much larger. For example, Meta laid off 21,000 people in 2022 and 2023 — equivalent to a quarter of the company’s workforce.
Facebook's parent company also announced some major changes earlier this year to build a closer relationship with President-elect Donald Trump. Specifically, Meta ended its third-party verification program in favor of a Community Notes model, where users will provide more context for posts.
“The recent elections have been a cultural tipping point, once again prioritizing speech,” Mark Zuckerberg said, stressing the decision was a response to the political climate.
He also brought Dana White, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, onto the company's board and replaced external affairs chairman Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan.
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