"Generous severance" promised Meta to cut 5% of employees deemed unfit for Zuckerbergs AI-fueled future Meta plans to refill roles with top talent to pursue AI and AR ambitions. Ashley Belanger Jan 14, 2025 3:05 pm | 20 Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAnticipating that 2025 will be an "intense year" requiring rapid innovation, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly announced that Meta would be cutting 5 percent of its workforcetargeting "lowest performers."Bloomberg reviewed the internal memo explaining the cuts, which was posted to Meta's internal Workplace forum Tuesday. In it, Zuckerberg confirmed that Meta was shifting its strategy to "move out low performers faster" so that Meta can hire new talent to fill those vacancies this year."Ive decided to raise the bar on performance management," Zuckerberg said. "We typically manage out people who arent meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now were going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle."Cuts will likely impact more than 3,600 employees, as Meta's most recent headcount in September totaled about 72,000 employees. It may not be as straightforward as letting go anyone with an unsatisfactory performance review, as Zuckerberg said that any employee not currently meeting expectations could be spared if Meta is "optimistic about their future performance," The Wall Street Journal reported.Any employees affected will be notified by February 10 and receive "generous severance," Zuckerberg's memo promised.This is the biggest round of cuts at Meta since 2023, when Meta laid off 10,000 employees during what Zuckerberg dubbed the "year of efficiency." Those layoffs followed a prior round where 11,000 lost their jobs and Zuckerberg realized that "leaner is better." He told employees in 2023 that a "surprising result" from reducing the workforce was "that many things have gone faster.""A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster," Zuckerberg wrote in 2023. "People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling. We will become an even greater magnet for the most talented people. That's why in our Year of Efficiency, we are focused on canceling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and making every organization as lean as possible."It seems that now that Meta is "leaner," the social media company is looking to ramp up its talent search to fulfill the part of Zuckerberg's plan where Meta becomes a "magnet" for top talent. According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg's more recent memo revealed Meta's plans to focus on "AI, smart glasses, and the future of social media," partly by replacing low performers with ideally high performers more capable of rapidly delivering innovative products.Meta's AI tweaks to its platform haven't necessarily always been a big hit with users. Earlier this month, Instagram users discovered old AI-powered characters and instantly reviled them. And Zuckerberg sparked additional backlash recently when a court filing alleged that he directly approved training Meta's AI models on a controversial data set of pirated books at the center of several lawsuits.But Meta clearly has no plans to slow down AI projects. In December, the company explained that the "biggest thing" Meta learned after its smart glasses "hit their stride" in 2024 was that "glasses are by far the best form factor for a truly AI-native device" and "might be the first hardware category to be completely defined by AI from the beginning.""There are endless opportunities ahead," Meta's blog said, promising that 2025 will bring "the evolution of AI assistants into tools that dont just respond to a prompt when you ask for help but can become a proactive helper as you go about your day."From there, Meta plans to combine the AI glasses with augmented reality to redefine social media, the blog said.According to the WSJ, Meta's memo has upset some employees, but Zuckerberg justified the new round of cuts as critical for Meta to build the most important technologies in the world.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 20 Comments