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Наталя ХандусенкоWork
13 February 2025, 15:24
2025-02-13
Among those laid off by Meta due to low productivity were specialists with higher performance: now they are worried about how they will get a new job with such a stigma
Some Meta employees with positive performance ratings were also laid off. People are now afraid that they won't be able to find good jobs when the goal of the layoffs was announced to the world - to eliminate those who are not coping with their duties. The likely reason is that managers could not recruit the necessary number of people with low performance and therefore had to select those with higher indicators.
Some Meta employees with positive performance ratings were also laid off. People are now afraid that they won't be able to find good jobs when the goal of the layoffs was announced to the world - to eliminate those who are not coping with their duties. The likely reason is that managers could not recruit the necessary number of people with low performance and therefore had to select those with higher indicators.
In January, Meta announced a new round of layoffs, covering 5% of its workforce, or 3,600 jobs. On Monday, people started receiving “happiness letters” from the company. For some, it came as a shock.
Some of the laid-off employees told Business Insider that they were rated “Meet or Exceed Expectations” — the middle level on Meta’s three-tiered performance evaluation system for 2024. But in the letter, they learned that they were rated “Meet Most” — one of the lower levels on Meta’s performance evaluation system for the year. That means they met most, but not all, of the expectations, which is why they were cut.
While Meta presented the cuts as affecting low-performing employees, internal instructions sent last month to the company's chief operating officer, Hillary Champion, allowed managers to bring in higher-performing employees if they couldn't reach the required number of lower-performing employees.
"When I got the email, I was surprised, mainly because I have a very solid track record and no performance metrics over the past six months that would indicate any performance issues," one affected employee told Business Insider.
Meta began its 2024 performance evaluation process in December, although most employees will not learn their final ratings until the coming weeks.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to streamline Meta’s workforce as the company invests billions in artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The layoffs could become an annual occurrence as Meta seeks to regularly fire those it deems its worst performers. At the same time, Meta plans to increase the number of machine learning engineers to work on AI.
"Just because someone has met or exceeded expectations in the past doesn't mean they will continue to meet those expectations," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider in an email after the publication. "Meta employees have always been accountable to a culture of high performance, driven by goals."
Employees were disappointed that Meta framed the company-wide layoffs as targeting those with consistently low performance, while some of those affected had previously received high performance ratings.
One employee says he was “unexpectedly” laid off, despite consistently meeting or exceeding expectations for four years before receiving a “Meets Most” rating at the end of 2024. Another employee reported being laid off shortly after returning from parental leave, despite receiving a “Meet or Exceed Expectations” rating at the beginning of 2024.
“The hardest part is that Meta is publicly saying it’s cutting low-performing employees, so it feels like we have a red letter on our back,” another employee told BI. “People need to know we’re not falling behind.”
“Management told us that if it was going to affect us, we should have expected it based on the conversations our managers were having with us in our weekly one-on-one meetings,” said one former employee. “But I was absolutely blown away by it. My manager kept telling me I was doing great and didn’t point out any areas that needed work. My supervisor even said I would be fine and it wouldn’t affect me.”
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