CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook made a startling comment this week during a Q&A session with employees. He said that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, wants to get rid of workers who aren’t performing as expected. 

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said during the meeting. He added, “I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me.”

The company is experiencing a slump in the markets, and grew only 7% to $27.9 billion in the first quarter, lower than hoped for. 

Zuckerberg said that Meta is gong to reduce its hiring by at least 30% this year, adding at most 7,000 hires instead of 10,000 it had planned. Empty position slots will probably be filled by internal personnel. There was a hiring freeze in May after the company experienced its slowest rate of growth since Facebook went public. Shares have declined more than 50% this year. 

Meta chief product officer Chris Cox wrote in an internal memo, “I have to underscore that we are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce. We need to execute flawlessly in an environment of slower growth, where teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets.”

Meta’s problems have coincided with a broader slump in the tech industry. The Nasdaq has fallen into bear territory and had its worst first-half year performance on record.