Based on their performance, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta will lay off 3,600 employees on Monday, February 10th across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
The layoff process, which represents five percent of the company’s current workforce, is expected to continue throughout the week.
The termination wave will begin in Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, concluding with North and Latin America.
However, several employees in several European countries, especially Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, will be exempt from the cuts “due to local regulations.”
Employees were informed through an internal memo on Friday seen by Reuters as the company continues to expedite the hiring of machine learning engineers.
Janelle Gale, Meta’s Vice President of Human Resources shared the memo on the company’s internal Workplace forum.
Affected workers will receive severance package notifications via their work and personal email and lose access to company systems within an hour. They will retain their February 15th stock vesting and bonus eligibility if applicable.
The memo also stated Meta would not publicly share who was laid off. Some of the affected roles might be backfilled.
If a manager is let go, their team members will be assigned a new manager.
“For teams losing a teammate or manager on Monday, I understand this might be a difficult day,” Gale wrote.
She acknowledged the disruption and said offices would stay open, but employees who could work remotely were allowed to do so.
Meta follows a hybrid work model, requiring employees in the office three days a week. However, working from home on Monday will still count as in-person time.
Affected employees cannot apply for internal positions during their non-working period however they may do so after their final employment.
“Past performance will be considered while making a hiring decision,” Gale noted.
The layoff follows CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s January announcement to “raise the bar on performance management” and quickly “move out low performers.”
Usually, Meta phases out underperformers over a year, but this time, the company is making bigger cuts based on recent performance reviews.
This latest layoff comes after Meta previously let go 21,000 employees between 2022 and 2023.