According to Reuters News Agency, Meta sent internal memorandums to its employees on Friday, 7 February 2025, informing them of company-wide layoffs, with the purpose of, amongst other rationale, “pushing ahead with the expedited hiring of machine learning engineers”.
Meta’s Head of People, Janelle Gale, is alleged to have notified employees that notices would be sent between 11 and 18 February 2025, to those affected employees who will be losing their jobs. The notice was applicable to most countries in which Meta operated, including the USA, Asia and Africa, with the exception of employees based in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, who will be exempt from the cuts “due to local regulations.”
Meta had confirmed in the middle of January 2025, through a memorandum that was sent to its staff by founder, chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, that it was preparing to “move out low performers” and the number of “about 5%” was bandied around, and with Meta employing approximately 72,000 employees globally, this equates to approximately 3,600 severances. However, Zuckerberg’s take on the staff leaving Meta’s employment, is that they will receive “generous severance”. In January, Zuckerberg had mentioned that Meta would “backfill” the roles later in 2025, and a separate notice posted by Peng Fan, VP of Engineering for Monetization at Meta, also on Friday, requested staffers to assist with an expedited hiring process for machine learning engineers and other “business critical” engineering roles.
A good day if you’re a machine learning engineer.
