Meta Reduces Workforce in Singapore as Part of Global Layoffs

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram has started a massive global workforce reduction leading to over four thousand people losing their jobs or around five percent of the total employees. This downsizing has reached Singapore where several employees from various departments have been laid off. The layoffs began on February 10th 2025 with affected 4000 employees notified via mail.

The redundancies in Singapore are said to have affected staff in Engineering, Partnerships, Global Business Operations and Policy roles. It is worth noting that some of the employees who had been dismissed were recently back from maternity or parental leave which raises questions about the criteria for such performance based terminations. 

A product manager at Meta’s Singapore office expressed to the media that the layoffs were “deeply emotional and challenging” and “low performance at Meta often means top performance elsewhere.” 

The organization says that layoffs are of a broader strategic initiative to improve efficiency and get prepared for huge investments in AI. According to Mark Zuckerberg, the company aims to “raise the performance bar” when unwelcome employees based on the number of employees performing below expectations. 

Nonetheless, certain ex-employees have opposed this line of reasoning, suggesting that in fact AI development was a much more relevant point in arguments compared with the individual performance issues.

The layoffs mark a clear conformance to a larger wave in the sector with various major tech companies laying off their staff in order to streamline operations and concentrate on emerging technologies.