• Mark Zuckerberg told employees that Meta would make “more extensive performance-based cuts.”
• In an internal memo released Tuesday, Zuckerberg said affected U.S. employees would be informed on Feb. 10.
• Last week, Meta said it would scale back DEI initiatives and eliminate third-party fact-checkers.

As Business Insider has learned, Meta is planning a performance-based workforce reduction.

According to an internal memo seen by BI, Mark Zuckerberg told his employees that he has “decided to raise the bar on performance management” and act quickly to “eliminate poor performers.”

The meta boss wrote in a post on Workplace, the company’s internal forum, that the company will be making “more extensive performance-based cuts” during this year’s performance review cycle.

Two Meta employees told BI that the company began its annual performance review process last week by requiring employees to submit their self-evaluations, peer reviews and manager reviews.

Zuckerberg said affected employees in the U.S. would be notified on February 10.

Meta said it last week would disband its DEI-focused team and eliminate diversity programs in its hiring process. The company’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, said in the memo announcing the changes that the term DEI has become “charged,” in part because it is “understood by some as a practice that confers preferential treatment to some groups.” suggests to others.”

Additionally, changes were made to content moderation policies earlier this week, including eliminating third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community notes model similar to X.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Read the full memo below:

Meta works to develop some of the world’s most important technologies – AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social media. This will be an intense year and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.

I decided to raise the bar on performance management and weed out low-performing employees more quickly. Typically, over the course of a year, we eliminate people who are not meeting expectations, but now we will be making more significant performance-based cuts this cycle – with the intention of filling these roles in 2025. We won. We cannot fire everyone who has failed to meet expectations in the last period if we are optimistic about their future performance, and for those we do fire we will provide generous severance packages consistent with what we believe in provided for previous cuts.

We will provide further guidance for managers in advance of calibrations. Affected individuals will be notified on February 10th – later for those outside the US.

Letting people go is never easy. But I’m confident this will empower our teams and help us build leading technologies to enable the future of human connection.