Workers fired by Meta in recent times in ull quickly fought back against publicly targeting low performers.
Understanding the potential stigma labelled in this way, affected employees took them to LinkedIn to lament the reputation of their former employers and BAT. Many claimed that they were actually high performers. As evidence, even a list of previous positive reviews was shared.
“Let’s be clear: the label is misleading and for many of us it’s completely wrong,” said Stephen Skapanik, former meta product designer at the platform. “I was wiped out by a process that has something to do with the hits of numbers rather than evaluating the individual performance quite a bit.”
Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s decision shows a change in the way technology companies approached restructuring, the decision to brand around 5% of their employees as low-performance before firing them this year.
The company has already cut nearly a quarter of its employees in the past few years. But this time it was more personal. The Meta boss told employees in a memo released in January that he had decided to “update the performance bar” with more ulls of around 3,600 employees.
The shift in tone from a restructuring to a massive amount of performance-based initiatives inject more Darwin’s spirit into Silicon Valley, according to interviews with multiple current and former engineers from companies such as Meta and academics and lawyers. It raises questions about the ability of workers who would have previously left the company with their reputation intact.
In January, Microsoft showed redundancy based on performance, targeting a small percentage of employees who received less than expected compensation (wage increases, stocks, bonus payments) in their final review. According to one person familiar with the issue, it was followed by efforts to make it easier for company managers to fire employees who perform poorly.
The person said the intense competition in artificial intelligence, especially for new startups, meant that companies needed to be more agile to maintain their benefits.
Performance-based Cal advocates argue that they make sense in business. But for affected staff looking to continue their careers elsewhere, they could be a worrying black mark. One former meta workers affected by the recent layoffs said they had been rejected since then on a job hunt, but they were not told this was particularly due to the low-performing label. Observers also warn that such target cuts will have a calm impact on innovation, and the remaining employees are looking to beat certain metrics, resulting in less risk.
“Usually, layoffs are not done in that way of performance,” says Annatavis, a professor at NYU and a former HR executive at Motorola and Nokia. “Usually these things are said behind closed doors… There’s something cruel to companies that announce to the world that these people are being let go of for performance.”
While the practice of firing someone based on professional flaws is not uncommon, the decision to abandon the so-called low performance has been in the toolkit of large tech employers that first appeared on social media site Twitter in recent years.
The 2022 Elon Musk $44 billion acquisition of the site now known as X was accompanied by an email entitled “A Fork in the Road.” This allows employees to embrace or leave the “very hardcore” culture. This left before Mask cut about 80% of its staff to 1,500 employees.
The billionaire then applied an approach to federal employees to his role in leading the so-called Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US President Donald Trump.
Lawyers and academics said that Mask’s actions in government provided coverage to large tech companies that have taken a more proactive approach with their employees. The tougher labor market also makes businesses that once felt that staff competition was not very safe.
“As the US cultural changes, there is a seismic change in employment practices,” said Deena Merlen, an attorney for Reavis Page Jump. “This has an impact on the decision-making and the type of procedures that are followed.”
Zuckerberg slowed down the company’s moderation approach and sought more “masculine energy” in corporate America, resulting in a cut in Meta’s work.
Several former meta employees have recently returned to work, claiming that they were rejected after a short period of medical or maternity leave.
“I never received reviews on Meta for more than three years (during) or less. I was on six months of maternity leave until November,” Meta’s former lawyer, Elana Reman Safner, said in a social media post. “Today’s layoffs seem to have a similar story: a history of good performances and a recent holiday.”
“By definition, ‘on vacation’ is not an evaluation of performance. I thought it was wrong,” said Nicole Schwartz, former research manager for Meta.
Some insiders and former staff members have suggested that the layoffs are a scary tactic to discourage employees from opposition to Zuckerberg’s overhaul. One former senior staff member suggested that some of them criticized his plans. “It sets up an environment where you’re ‘You’re against us or against us,'” the person said.
Meta declined to comment.
One current META employee told the Financial Times that the rest of the staff are now safely alive. “People are worried about blocking this risk-taking. I personally decided to cut down my ambitions and focus on a safe and easy victory,” the person said. “People are not only scared of making big bets, they are scared of bereavement and taking parental leave.”
A former Microsoft employee said the layoffs created “a little internally fear,” and the decision to label low-performers represent a “change in the atmosphere” for the company. They noted that most integration activities across the sector were halted several years ago.
Microsoft said: “We’re focused on high-performance talent. We’re always committed to helping people learn and grow. When people aren’t performing, we take the right action.”
Some employees are expected to file discrimination claims. However, even if the underlying justification was not based on performance, there is little protection for the majority of employees caught up in performance-based layoffs in the US.
“The rule is generally “intentional employment,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor rights lawyer who filed class action lawsuits against businesses including Uber and Twitter. “If an employee is fired based on performance that has no legitimate issues, the law cannot automatically contest that.”
The Federal Worker Coordination and Retraining Notice (WARN) Act requires US employers with more than 100 staff to provide at least 60 days of notification prior to mass layoffs. However, if the decision is performance-related, then it is not necessary.
Employees are not entitled to resign from payments or certain unemployment benefits because they are being let go for performance reasons. Some companies, including Microsoft, lose access to internal applications and interview resources available to peers for reasons of restructuring.
One senior recruiter for a large technology company said companies could be forced to certify their decision to fire staff based on their performance in court, especially if they fail to support their role.
The same recruiter added that given the revolving doors present in Silicon Valley, it is unlikely that employees will be contaminated by Cal. “People know that internal and external politics play a big role in all of this,” they said. “Good people know good people, and layoffs (doesn’t hurt) the image of good employment.”
“At the end of the day, it depends on how you wear it,” the recruiter added.
