Facebook Prepares for Layoffs as Company Faces One of Its Worst Downturns in Recent History

Facebook (now known as Meta) has reportedly told managers to identify employees for layoffs, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently saying the company is experiencing “one of the worst downturns” in recent history.

Facebook employees are facing layoffs, as Vice President for Remote Presence Maher Saba recently told managers to identify people on their team who “need support,” as well as “move to exit” poor performers “who are unable to get on track,” according to a report by the Information.

Mark Zuckerberg surrounded by guards ( Chip Somodevilla /Getty)

The verbiage suggests that employees who get singled out for needing support will have a chance to redeem themselves, but that staffers who don’t make progress will ultimately get canned.

“The reaction from folks that have seen this [memo] is that this will be used to create a bunch [of] ‘performance improvement plans’ that will result in mass layoffs,” a person familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.

Saba also reportedly wrote in the memo that “if a direct report is coasting or is a low performer, they are not who we need; they are failing this company,” adding, “as a manager, you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative for Meta.”

Recently, Zuckerberg warned employees during a companywide call that not everyone was meeting the company’s standards, and that Facebook had cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30 percent this year.

“If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” Zuckerberg told them. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”

In the last quarter of 2021, Facebook lost daily active users for the first time in the company’s history, with Zuckerberg attributing the decline to competition from the Chinese-owned app, TikTok, where many young users are flocking to today.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.