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

Meta on Monday started notifying employees affected by its latest round of cuts. 

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 affected workers in the US, Europe, and Asia.

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

Zuckerberg also said Meta would backfill these roles this year. The company now appears focused on hiring engineers in the coming weeks.

Peng Fan, a vice president of engineering for monetization, said on Friday in a post on Meta’s internal forum Workplace that Meta needed to “hire many engineers in 2025.” Fan said that the company needed to fill business-critical roles and that there was an 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.

Fan added a call for existing employees trained in interviewing to sign up to help with 420 software engineer interviews, 225 software engineer behavioral interviews, and 50 machine-learning system design interviews.

Zuckerberg told investors in Meta’s latest earnings call that AI would be key to the company’s revenue strategy. Meta expects to spend $65 billion this year on AI.

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

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

Correction: February 10, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the names of the Meta executives Peng Fan and Nam Nguyen.