Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on more cartoon villainy this week by proposing to lay off more than 3,600 employees — or roughly five percent of Meta's "lowest performers." Of course, in true capitalist fashion, he plans to backfill those positions later this year.
"I've decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster," Zuckerberg said in an internal memo, according to Bloomberg. "We typically manage out people who aren't meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle."
CNBC reports that affected employees will be notified by Feb. 10, giving them a month to stew over their fate and brace for the worst. Those let go will receive severance similar to what previous laid-off employees got, the report claims. In 2022, when Meta slashed nearly a quarter of its workforce, the company offered a severance package that included 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks for each year of service (with no cap), full payout of remaining PTO, six months of healthcare, three months of career support, and immigration assistance.
This comes just a few days after Meta announced a few fairly massive reversals in policies. Zuckerberg announced last week that his platforms would get rid of fact-checkers in favor of Community Notes, which many civil and human rights organizations point out has the potential to lead to increased violence, hate speech, and the spread of misinformation.
Meta also lifted prohibitions against some forms of hate speech on its platforms, allowing posts that call women property, specific ethnic groups "filth," and more approved use of hate speech. The company got rid of DEI initiatives, removed tampons from men's bathrooms in Meta’s offices in California, Texas, and New York, deleted trans and nonbinary themes on its Messenger app, and announced that political content would once again be recommended on Threads and Instagram.
