Meta has started laying off thousands of workers in response to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's continuous demands for more efficiency and funding for artificial intelligence. According to an internal memo that Business Insider received, alerts have begun to be sent to affected employees in the US, Europe, and Asia. The layoffs amount to almost 4,000 people, or around 5% of the workforce. In January, Zuckerberg warned employees that Meta would "raise the bar" on performance reviews, which would result in the firing of underperforming workers. Similar to a larger trend in Big Tech, companies like Microsoft and Amazon are also cutting back after hiring a lot of people during the pandemic. Even though Meta is making money, they are putting a lot of money into artificial intelligence, which will cost billions to build out. The market value of Meta has increased by more than $1 trillion since Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" remark in 2023, when the stock first began to rise. Severance packages for affected US employees will include 16 weeks of salary plus two extra weeks for every year of service. However, several workers have expressed worry about a prevailing atmosphere of dread and uncertainty at Meta, drawing comparisons to a George Orwell novel. Meta is also changing things around. The teams that work on Facebook and Messenger are coming together, and leadership jobs in Meta's AI division are changing. Meta is reintegrating Reality Labs, its ambitious but loss-making metaverse branch, into its primary business. European workers in countries like Germany and France can't be fired right away because of labour laws. Instead, they have to go through their own performance management methods.