Meta speeds up its hiring process for machine learning engineers as it cuts thousands of ‘low performers’

Meta started notifying employees impacted by its latest round of cuts on February 10.

Meta is ramping up hiring for machine learning engineers while slashing thousands of jobs.

Last month, Meta said it would eliminate about 5% of its workforce, which could mean almost 4,000 employees lose their jobs. On Monday, the social media giant started notifying impacted workers in emails sent to employees in the US, Europe, and Asia.

In an internal memo announcing the cuts, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said he “decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.”

Zuckerberg also said that Meta will be backfilling these roles this year. The company now appears focused on hiring engineers in the coming weeks.

Peng Fang, VP of engineering for monetization, wrote a post shared on Meta’s internal forum Workplace on Friday that said Meta needs to “hire many engineers in 2025.” Fang said the company needs to fill business criticial roles and said there is a particular emphasis on machine learning engineers.

“In an effort to expedite recruiting in these areas, we are planning ML Batch Day Interviews between February 11th – March 13th (3 batch days per week),” he wrote.

Fang added a call out for current employees who are trained in interviewing to sign up and help with 420 software engineer interviews, 225 software engineer behavioral interviews, and 50 machine learning system design interviews.

Zuckerberg told investors in its most recent earnings call that AI will be key to the company’s revenue strategy, and Meta is projected to spend $65 billion on AI this year.

In a separate post on Workplace last week, Nam Nguyn, head of engineering at Instagram said interviewers should aim to conduct two interviews per week.

“This is necessary in light of recent announcements and evolving recruiting targets,” Nguyn wrote.

“In addition to this target, we are committed to growing our interviewer pool by 20% and are reaching for an interview acceptance rate of >70%. As we continue into 2025, Interviewing is once again a top priority for Meta.”

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from B-17.