Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, informed employees in internal memos seen by Reuters on Friday that it intends to proceed with company-wide layoffs next week while also moving forward with hiring machine learning engineers expeditiously.
According to Meta's Head of People Janelle Gale, notifications for job cuts will commence at 5 a.m. local time on Monday across most countries, including the U.S. Countries like Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands are not included in the layoffs "due to local regulations," whereas employees in over a dozen other countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa will be notified between February 11 and February 18.
The company declined to provide comments on the memos. Last month, the company confirmed its intention to part ways with its "lowest performers" and fill some of the vacated positions. The Friday memo, labeling the cuts as "performance terminations," was initially reported by The Information.
Meta plans to maintain its offices open on Monday despite the layoffs, and no further details on these decisions will be released, as stated by Gale in her memo.
A separate memo, issued by VP of Engineering for Monetization Peng Fan on Friday, requested employees' assistance in expediting the hiring process for machine learning engineers and other essential engineering roles. This hiring initiative is scheduled to take place between February 11 and March 13.
Fan expressed gratitude for the support towards achieving the company's accelerated hiring objectives, stating, "Thank you for your continued support in helping us achieve our accelerated hiring goals, and better align with our company's priorities for 2025."