Facebook owner Meta Platforms told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters on Friday that it intends to carry out its anticipated company-wide layoffs next week while moving forward with the expedited hiring of machine learning engineers. The move is part of a plan to cut roughly 5% of its “lowest performers” and backfill at least some positions.
One of the blogs, written by Janelle Gale, Head of People at Meta, states that notices would be sent to workers who lose their jobs beginning at 5 a.m. local time Monday in the majority of nations, including the US.According to the statement, workers in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands would not be affected by the reduction “due to local regulations,” while workers in over a dozen other European, Asian, and African nations will be notified between February 11 and February 18.
A representative for Meta chose not to respond to the posts.
About 5% of the company’s “lowest performers” will be let go, and at least some of the positions will be filled, the company announced last month. The Information was the first to report on the Friday message, in which Gale described the cutbacks as “performance terminations.”
“Meta was planning to keep its offices open on Monday and would not issue any updates providing further details on the decisions,” Gale wrote in her post, in contrast to past company-wide layoffs.
Staff members were requested to help with a quicker hiring process for machine learning engineers and other “business critical” technical positions in a separate message posted by Peng Fan, VP of technical for Monetization, on Friday.
In that post, Fan stated that the process would occur from February 11 to March 13.
“Thank you for your continued support in helping us achieve our accelerated hiring goals, and better align with our company’s priorities for 2025.”