Zuckerberg to ‘Move Out’ Meta’s Low Performers by Axing 5% of Workforce
It’s the latest in several moves — announced in swift succession — that suggest a radical overhaul in Zuckerberg’s thinking about Meta.
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Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt Mark Zuckerberg hit his staff with a guillotine choke Tuesday, telling low performers at his social media giant Meta to expect a pink slip.
In an internal memo, Zuckerberg said he plans to cut 5% of the company’s workforce for “performance” reasons and “bring new people in” to replace them. It’s the latest in several moves — announced in swift succession — that suggest a radical overhaul in his thinking about the company.
Culture Change
Last week, Zuckerberg said fact-checking on Meta’s US platforms — which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — will soon be a verified thing of the past. The company also axed several diversity and inclusion initiatives, following similar moves at Walmart, McDonald’s, Boeing, Toyota and several other big name firms across industries in recent months.
In a shakeup near the top, Zuckerberg appointed UFC CEO Dana White, a key ally of President-elect Donald Trump, to Meta’s board and tapped former Republican political operative Joel Kaplan to act as the company’s president of global affairs. Meta is also chipping in $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and Zuckerberg plans to attend next week’s ceremony alongside fellow tech leaders Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
But while all these moves suggest a political realignment of Meta to navigate the incoming administration’s restructuring of government policy, Tuesday’s announcement was more of a throwback to the cutthroat startup world from whence TheFacebook, as it was first known, came:
- With over 72,000 employees, the redundancies could impact over 3,600 positions. Zuckerberg said straight up that it’ll be a more ruthless round than usual: “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.”
- Meta shares slid 1.9% Tuesday, outstripping smaller declines in big tech stocks such as Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. That, however, may relate to advertising, which makes up the lion’s share of Meta’s $135 billion in revenue — some ad execs told the Financial Times on Sunday that the end of fact-checking could dent the company’s sales if their clients worry about running ads next to unmoderated content (though it may be fair to wonder where brands would flee to, especially with TikTok on the ropes).
Home Before Abroad: Two members of Meta’s oversight board wrote in Prospect magazine last week that the rollout of the company’s fact-checking changes will take up to a year, but that there are no indications they will be instituted abroad any time soon, if at all. The performance-based cuts, too, have a definite US timeline, with American workers to be notified they’re being let go by February 10, and workers elsewhere getting the grand ole TBD.