- Meta wrote in internal memos that it was going to lay off 5% of its staff, focused on the worst workers.
- People on staff asked how the cuts would be made. After a “pretty rough” week, one person didn’t like the news.
- Some workers were not sure if the internal performance reviews were accurate.
Mark Zuckerberg told Meta employees on Tuesday that the company would be letting go of “extensive” low-performing workers. This would affect about 5% of the company’s staff. For some employees, the layoffs made them wonder how their work would be judged and raised morale worries.
Business Insider saw that employees wrote about their feelings on a private message board. A lot of people asked what the changes would mean in real life. Some workers wanted Meta to raise its standards, but others wanted more information about the process, especially since Meta is getting rid of third-party fact-checkers and rolling back DEI policies at the same time.
It will be a busy year, so I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams, Zuckerberg wrote in a note to the whole company on Tuesday. He said that instead of firing poor performers over the course of a year, the company would do it more quickly during this review period.
BI looked over a different memo sent to Meta managers that said the company was going to lay off about 5% of its staff. Meta’s most recent earnings report said that it had 72,404 employees around the world at the end of September. This means that the job changes would mean the loss of about 3,600 jobs.
A few employees said they agreed with the choice to make the company’s standards higher. Someone wrote, “I realize there is a need to raise the bar and I absolutely support this.” Some people were interested in how the cuts would be made.
“How much of this decision will be based on performance and how much will be based on area of investment,” a worker asked. Someone else asked if the cuts would affect Meta’s “exploratory work.”
“Year of intensity?” wrote someone else, which seemed to be a joke about Meta’s “year of efficiency.”
“How will HR determine the level of optimism about someone’s future at the company?” Someone else asked a question that seemed to be about Zuckerberg’s statement that Meta “won’t manage out everyone who didn’t meet expectations for the last period if we’re optimistic about their future performance.”
Zuckerberg said that workers in the US who would be hit with layoffs would be told by February 10. Workers in other areas might have to wait longer. When workers saw Zuckerberg’s post, at least 664 of them replied with a shocked emoji, 386 with a like, and 66 with a crying emoji.
This week has been busy for Meta workers. Zuckerberg said on January 7 that the company would get rid of third-party fact-checkers and replace them with a community-notes system. He also said that the company planned to add political content to the news feed again. Staff were told on Friday that Meta would be ending its DEI projects.
One worker wrote on the company’s message board on Tuesday, after the layoffs were announced, “Teams aren’t exactly strong when morale is low, and this has already been a pretty rough ride over the last week.”
A spokesperson for Meta didn’t say anything about the letters or how the employees reacted to them.
“Throwing Darts” By Monkeys
Meta will use its own performance review program to figure out which employees it can let go. This program gives employees grades like “did not meet expectations” and “exceeded expectations.”
One worker wrote on the company’s internal channel that they didn’t believe the performance review method was a good way to do this. “I would say the ratings and process creates marginally better than ‘monkey’s throwing darts’ in terms of reflecting the actual performance and impact for a large majority of the people,” they said.
Others wanted to know if the changes would affect bosses who aren’t doing their jobs well and how they would affect people who are on maternity or mental health leave.
“How are we going to balance false positive terminations of people who have context about the products and are just having unlucky halves with the cost of ramping up new people who have an even bigger chance of not being able to perform at the desired bar?” a colleague asked.
It was said by Meta’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, that a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page would be posted later on Tuesday “with more information around how this process will work.”
One worker said that LGBTQ+ workers might have “additional concerns” about their job reviews.
“As the company builds towards broader cognitive diversity, is there any outsized weighting for LGBTQ+ metamates in these perf reviews or in who gets offered severance?” the team asked. “Just want to check whether that will be a factor.”
Also Read: Meta Was Fined $263m for a Security Breach in 2018 That Touched About 3 Million Eu Users
“Certainly not,” Gale replied. “This is not meant to be mean to the LGBTQ+ community or anyone else.” Honesty and objectivity are very important in the Perf@ process, and we work hard to make sure that our methods are free of bias. We will not stand for any kind of abuse. End of sentence.”
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