Meta has begun to cut thousands of jobs to focus on AI investment and efficiency.Mark Zuckerberg targets low performers, part of a broader industry move toward leaner operations.Some employees told Business Insider they are anxious about the changes.Meta has begun to cut thousands of jobs as the social media giant takes a tougher stance on underperforming employees and readies its finances for another year of heavy AI investment. Impacted employees in Europe, Asia, and the US have started to be notified, per an internal post view by Business Insider.The company has said it will eliminate roughly 5% of its workforce, which could mean almost 4,000 employees lose their jobs.CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff in January he would "raise the bar" and move quickly to remove low performers, according to an internal memo seen by BI.This is part of a broader push by big tech companies to make themselves leaner, after a hiring spree during the pandemic. Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and others are collectively eliminatingthousands of employees.Zuckerberg has been at the forefront of this, announcing a"Year of Efficiency" in 2023 that has continued through last year and into 2025.Wall Street has rewarded Meta for this new focus, sending the company's shares soaring since the start of 2023 a run that's added more than $1 trillion to Meta's market valuation.While Meta remained profitable through recent periods of heavy hiring and big spending, the company is now racing to keep up with rivals in the generative AI race. This requires billions of dollars in infrastructure and related investment. That's likely putting pressure on Zuckerberg to seek cost-savings elsewhere.A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.Impact on some employeesFor some Meta employees, the ongoing efficiency drive is causing anxiety. These staffers asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics."Mark is creating fear," a current Meta employee told BI. "He's creating a culture where you have to be loyal to him or else."Another employee told BI that working at Meta right now "feels like living in a George Orwell novel."Even colleagues who have performed well "have been disappearing all year, and when you ask about it, you're just told 'they're no longer with the company'," this person said. "Self-censorship is rampant. At a company supposedly dedicated to connecting people, the human side of our work is disappearing and everyone is acting more robotic."Another Meta employee said reductions shouldn't be branded as performance-based cuts because this could potentially damage people's reputations as they seek other opportunities."Now people have to go back out into the job market with a label that is incredibly unfair," this person added.They expressed concern that good employees would be cut just to meet quotas, and that this could have a negative impact on morale at Meta."What's the incentive to help a new hire ramp up if they're just going to stack rank us and probably do this all again next year?" this person added.How Meta's latest job cuts may workThe job cuts are designed to target employees who receive "Met Some" or "Did Not Meet" ratings, the bottom two categories in Meta's assessment system, in their performance reviews.According to internal guidance obtained by BI last month, managers must identify 12% to 15% of employees eligible for these ratings. Meta aims to reach 10% "non-regrettable attrition" by combining these cuts with previous departures. For example, if a team had 5% attrition in 2024, managers would need to identify another 7% to 10% of their employees for the bottom ratings to meet the total target.One Meta employee told BI that forcing managers to place team members into bottom categories for job cuts has spread anxiety through management ranks as well as rank-and-file workers.On Friday, employees received a memo from Janelle Gale, Meta's vice president of HR, detailing how the process is supposed to work. According to the memo, which was obtained by BI, affected employees will be notified through their work and personal email addresses and will lose access to company systems within an hour of being informed. They will receive severance package information in the same email.The notifications will be staggered across time zones, with employees in Asia Pacific being notified first, followed by Europe, Middle East and Africa, and finally North and Latin America.Employees in European countries including Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands will be exempt from this process due to local regulations and will instead follow local performance management processes. Meta intends to backfill these roles but the memo says that plans and timelines "may vary," according to the memo.How Meta is reorganizing itselfWhile these cuts happen, the social-media giant is also reorganizing some of its businesses and divisions. Meta is bringing its Reality Labs division closer to its main business, reversing some of Zuckerberg's 2021 reorganization, while simultaneously shaking up its Messenger, Facebook, and generative AI teams.The company is merging its Facebook and Messenger teams under Facebook chief Tom Alison, while Messenger head Loredana Crisan will move to the generative AI group, according to The Information.Meta's Reality Labs division, which has lost nearly $60 billion since 2020, is being more tightly integrated with Meta's main business. In an internal memo obtained by BI, Reality Labs Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth announced that Reality Labs has "become a positive driver for Meta's overall brand."