Workers laid off by Meta in its recent cull that publicly targeted low performers were quick to fight back.
Conscious of the potential stigma of being labelled in this way, affected employees took to LinkedIn to bemoan their former employer and bat for their reputation. Many insisted they were in fact high performers; some even shared lists of their previous positive evaluations as evidence.
“Let’s be clear: that label is misleading, and for many of us, it’s flat-out wrong,” said Steven Sczepanik, a former Meta product designer, on the platform. “I was swept up in a process that had more to do with hitting numbers than fairly evaluating individual performance.”
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to brand roughly 5 per cent of its workforce as low performers before firing them this year marked a shift in how the technology company approached restructuring.
The company had already cut nearly a quarter of its workforce in the past few years, as it reversed a pandemic hiring boom. But this time was more personal: the Meta boss told employees in a memo published in January that he had decided to “raise the bar on performance” with a further cull of roughly 3,600 employees.
According to interviews with multiple current and former tech workers at companies including Meta, as well as academics and lawyers, the change in tone from restructuring to mass performance-based initiatives injects a more Darwinian ethos into Silicon Valley. It has cast doubts on the competence of workers who would have previously left a company with their reputation intact.
Microsoft in January also made redundancies based on performance, targeting a small percentage of employees who had received “less than expected rewards” — wage increases, stock and bonus payments — at their last review. It followed efforts to make it easier for managers at the company to fire underperforming employees, according to one person familiar with the matter.
The person said fierce competition in artificial intelligence, particularly against new start-ups, meant companies needed to be more agile to maintain an advantage.
Defenders of performance-based culls argue they make business sense. But for affected staff looking to continue their career elsewhere, they can be a worrying black mark. One former Meta worker affected by the recent lay-offs said they had received rejections in their job hunt since — although they had not been told this was specifically due to the low-performer label. Observers have also warned such targeted cuts have a chilling effect on innovation, with remaining employees taking fewer risks as they seek to beat certain metrics.
“Usually, lay-offs aren’t done in such a performative way,” said Anna Tavis, a professor at NYU and former HR executive at Motorola and Nokia. “Usually these things are said behind closed doors . . . There’s a cruelty involved in a company announcing to the world that these people are being let go because of their performance.”
The practice of firing someone based on professional shortcomings is not unusual — but the decision to shed so-called low performers en masse has only entered large tech employers’ tool kits in recent years, having first emerged at social media site Twitter.
Elon Musk’s $44bn acquisition in 2022 of the site, now known as X, was accompanied by an email titled “A Fork in the Road”. This laid out an ultimatum for employees to accept an “extremely hardcore” culture, or leave — before Musk cut headcount by about 80 per cent, to 1,500 employees.
The billionaire has since applied the approach to federal employees in his role leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) under US President Donald Trump.
Lawyers and academics said Musk’s behaviour in government had provided cover to big technology companies taking a more aggressive approach with their own employees. A tighter labour market has also emboldened companies that once felt less secure competing for staff.
“There are seismic changes in employment practices amid a cultural shift in the US,” said Deena Merlen, an attorney at Reavis Page Jump. “This is impacting decision making and the types of procedures that are being followed.”
Meta’s job cuts came as Zuckerberg loosened the company’s moderation approach and called for more “masculine energy” in corporate America, which many have interpreted as overtures to the Trump administration.
Several former Meta employees have claimed they were dismissed following a short period on either medical or maternity leave and had only recently returned to work.
“I had never previously received a review below ‘meets all’ [during] my three-plus years at Meta, and I was on maternity leave for six months until November,” said Elana Reman Safner, a former lawyer for Meta, in a social media post. “Many laid off today seem to have similar stories — a history of good performance, and a recent leave of absence.”
“‘On Leave,’ by definition, is not a performance rating. I thought wrong,” said Nichole Schwartz, a former research manager at Meta.
Some insiders and former staff members suggested the lay-offs were a scare tactic to dissuade employees from dissent over Zuckerberg’s overhaul. One former senior staff member suggested some of those let go had criticised his plans. “It’s setting up an environment of — ‘you’re either with us or against us’,” the person said.
Meta declined to comment.
One current Meta employee told the Financial Times that remaining staff were now playing it safe to survive. “People are worried this disincentivises risk-taking. I personally have decided to cut [down] my ambition and focus on safe easy wins,” the person said. “Not only are people scared to take big bets, but they are now scared to take bereavement and parental leave.”
A former Microsoft employee said the firings had created a “bit of fear internally” and that the decision to label people low performers represented a “vibe shift” for the company. They noted that most unionising activity across the sector had been stopped several years ago.
Microsoft said: “We focus on high performance talent. We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”
Some employees are expected to bring discrimination claims. However there are few safeguards for the majority of employees caught up in performance-based dismissals in the US — where most large technology companies are headquartered — even where the underlying justification may not have been based on performance.
“Generally the rule is ‘employment at will’,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labour rights lawyer who has brought class actions against companies including Uber and Twitter. “If an employee is terminated on the basis of performance, where there’s no legitimate issue, the law doesn’t automatically let you contest that.”
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (Warn) Act requires employers in the US with more than 100 staff to provide at least 60 days’ notice before a mass dismissal. But they are not required to do so in instances where the decision relates to performance.
Employees let go for performance reasons are not entitled to severance payments or certain unemployment benefits. At some companies, including Microsoft, they lose access to internal application and interview resources that are available to peers let go for restructuring reasons.
One senior recruiter at a large technology company said companies could be forced to qualify their decision to fire staff on the basis of performance in court, particularly if they did not backfill the role.
The same recruiter added that employees were unlikely to be tainted by the culls given the revolving door that existed in Silicon Valley. “People know that internal and external politics play a huge part in all this,” they said. “Good people know good people. And lay-offs don’t [tarnish] the image of a good hire.”
“At the end of the day, it depends on how you wear it,” the recruiter added.
