Yuan CNBC confirmed on Tuesday that the company will lay off approximately 5% of its workforce, with a focus on the company’s lowest-performing employees.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg On Tuesday, the company posted a memo to an internal workplace forum informing employees of the decision to “remove underperforming employees more quickly.” Zuckerberg told employees that 2025 will be an “intense year.”

The company noted in a separate message posted by company directors that it was “retiring approximately 5% of its lowest-performing employees.” Meta has more than 72,000 employees, according to its latest figures quarterly report.

Meta said employees affected by the layoffs will be notified by February 10 and receive severance packages based on the standards previously provided by the company. The layoffs are Meta’s largest since it laid off 21,000 employees, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023.

Bloomberg first reported the layoffs, citing internal memo.

The move follows several major operational changes within Meta aimed at building closer ties with the president-elect Donald Trump.

Last week, Zuckerberg Announce Meta will end its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a “community annotation” model Elon MuskOn Platform X, individual users provide more context to posts.

Zuckerberg said in a statement: “The recent election also feels like a cultural turning point to prioritize speech again, so we’re going back to our roots to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring people on our platform. freedom of speech.” video announcement.

The following is an internal memo from Zuckerberg obtained by CNBC.

Meta is building some of the most important technologies in the world. Artificial intelligence, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media. This is going to be an intense year and I want to make sure we have the best talent on our team.

I decided to raise the bar on performance management and eliminate poor performers faster. We typically manage people who are not performing to expectations throughout the year, but now we will be making broader performance-based layoffs during this cycle with the intention of refilling those positions in 2025. We won. If we are optimistic about the future performance of people who did not meet expectations in the prior period, we will not lay off them; for those we do lay off, we will provide generous severance packages consistent with prior layoffs.

We will provide additional guidance to managers prior to calibration. Affected persons outside the United States will be notified on February 10 or later