Meta to start laying off 3000 employees today as company shifts focus to AI hiring

New York: Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is set to begin company-wide layoffs on Tuesday across multiple countries as part of its push to expedite hiring for machine learning engineers, according to internal memos sent to employees on Friday, Reuters reported.

One of the memos, authored by Meta’s head of people Janelle Gale, stated that notices, including those for employees in the US, were expected to be sent by Monday at 5am local time. Workers in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands will be exempt from the layoffs “due to local regulations”, while employees in over a dozen other countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa will receive their notifications between February 11 and February 18, the memo mentioned.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the memos, the Reuters report said.

Last month, the company confirmed plans to cut about 5 per cent of its “lowest performers” while backfilling some of the positions. The Friday memo, in which Gale described the cuts as “performance terminations,” was first reported by The Information.

According to layoff.fyi, Meta is laying off over 3,000 employees. CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the move, saying that the company aims to “raise the bar on performance” and remove underperformers more quickly. Zuckerberg has already cautioned that 2024 and 2025 will be “challenging years” for the company. While Meta continues to invest heavily in AI and metaverse initiatives, the job cuts highlight the growing pressure on tech giants to remain profitable and efficient.

Unlike previous large-scale layoffs, Meta planned to keep its offices open on Monday and would not issue additional updates regarding the decisions, Gale mentioned in her post.

In a separate memo on Friday, Peng Fan, VP of Engineering for Monetization, urged employees to support an accelerated hiring process for machine learning engineers and other “business critical” engineering positions.