The future of thousands of Meta employees is unsafe as the company begins a massive reduction of workers.
From reliable sources, it seems like the company will do the employee reduction very "quietly" as they seek to tag many workers as underperforming.
Business Insider reported that the company was preparing to reduce about 15% of its current working staff.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the company, announced that the company was freezing hiring for the moment during a Q&A session. The hiring freeze is not new, as the company has had it in place since May 2022.
"Our plan is to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year. Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas. I wanted to give our leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition, and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives," Mark Zuckerberg said.
The major executives handling the company, including Mark Zuckerberg, have told different managers across Facebook and its sister companies to reduce their staff by 15%.
Although the meeting details are already known to the public, Meta has issued its workers warning not to be identified talking about non-public issues.
Some who work for Meta seemed to confirm the news, making rounds on social media with a post. The Meta worker posted on Blind, an app for tech workers, and said, "this 15% will likely be put on PIP and be let go."
Because of the post, many other Meta workers have shared their opinions concerning the new development. Most of them are unhappy, as the future around their job is becoming uncertain.
What Happens to the 15 percent of workers?
Many news outlets and experts have analyzed how the designated 15% of workers could be laid off.
In the Facebook employee review process, someone "in need of support" might be on their way outside the job.
It is a term that refers to those whose performance at the job is below par.
Before the latest announcement by Meta was made, Maher Saba, Meta's head of engineering, had told other directors to separate workers who fell under the "needs support" category. However, it hasn't been reported how many percent of employees should be labeled in that category.
Those who are put in performance improvement plans (PIP) have little chance of getting back to their jobs.
If Meta keeps to its word of a 15% reduction in staff, about 12,000 people would be affected. Managers will also be affected as their teams would have to be dissolved if many workers are laid off.
As expected, any employees are unhappy with the news as they don't know if they are the next in line for employee reduction. They also mentioned that Meta made it seem as if the employees were the ones leaving quietly, while in reality, they were being forced to leave.
When asked for comments about the latest development in the company, a spokesperson for Meta declined.