Meta has made it known that it plans to focus and invest more on artificial intelligence this year. It is also taking a strict stance against underperformers by laying them off. In fact, five per cent of its workforce across 12 countries will be laid off. That means about 4,000 employees may be impacted. The affected employees have already started receiving notifications from the company, as reported by Business Insider and Money Control.
The terminated employees are likely to be unable to access their work systems within an hour of being notified via their official e-mail addresses. The employees have been informed that these notifications are bound to cause some amount of disturbance and disruption at work for a short while.
The terminations will take place in phases across various time zones. Employees in Asia-Pacific will receive the notifications first, followed by employees in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America and Latin America. Affected employees will receive information about their severance packages via mail.
That Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta, was determined to do away with underperformers was clear in January itself. Zuckerberg had made it clear that he was determined to have only high performers in the workforce. In January itself the company had revealed its preparations to let go 3,600 employees who had not performed up to the mark. It had said it planned to replace them with new hires. Exactly how many employees within the US and how many outside would be impacted by this layoff round was not revealed then and still remains unknown.
What is known though is that employees appear to be living in fear and uncertainty.
