Meta lays off 4K workers — as some claim they received glowing reviews just last year: report
Meta laid off about 4,000 workers on Monday in a performance-based job-cutting spree — but several impacted staffers claimed they had received glowing feedback from their managers just last year, according to a report.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the layoffs — which slashed Meta’s workforce by 5% — in January, telling staffers he “decided to raise the bar on performance management,” taking a more “hardcore” approach to weeding out low performers, as fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk has done at his companies.
Some affected employees said the firings came as total whiplash, since just last year they had received “At or Above Expectations” ratings during their annual review — the middle tier in Meta’s mid-year review system, according to Business Insider.
“We were told by leadership that if we would be impacted by this, then we would already be expecting it, based on conversations our managers should have been having with us in our weekly one-on-ones,” an impacted employee told Business Insider.
“But I was completely blindsided by this,” the employee continued. “My manager had been telling me that I have been doing great and did not provide any areas to be worked on. My manager even said that I would be fine and not impacted.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Multiple impacted employees said they were high performers last year, and were shocked to find their ratings had been downgraded to “Meets Most,” a lower tier in the system, just in time for Monday’s job cuts.
“When I received the email, I was surprised by it mostly because I have a very solid performance history and no indicators of the last six months of performance problems,” one laid-off employee told BI.
One Meta staffer, who said they were “unexpectedly” fired, posted documents to Meta’s internal forum, Workplace, showing they had consistently met or exceeded expectations for four years before a sudden downgrade to “Meets Most” in late 2024, according to BI.
Another impacted employee said they had received an “At or Above Expectations” rating in early 2024, but were suddenly let go on Monday shortly after returning from parental leave, according to the report.
“I am super confused how I got terminated,” the employee wrote on Workplace. “I still think this is an error.”
Last month, Zuckerberg emphasized his desire to act quickly to “move out low performers.”
But internal guidance permitted Meta’s managers to include employees from higher performance tiers in the job cuts if they could not meet their reduction targets with low performers alone, according to BI.
Some employees shared concerns that the sudden performance downgrade and their public label as “low performers” by Zuckerberg could hurt their career.
“The hardest part is Meta publicly stating they’re cutting low performers, so it feels like we have the scarlet letter on our backs,” an impacted employee told BI. “People need to know we’re not underperformers.”
One employee griped that they were dropped two performance ratings from their mid-year review in 2024, and were not given any feedback from their manager.
“I would certainly challenge Meta’s narrative about cutting only low performers,” another laid-off worker told the outlet. “I have a really, really difficult time believing I was a low performer based on past feedback I was given by my manager.”
