Tech giant Meta, formerly Facebook, gave thousands of employees low ratings in a recently concluded round of performance reviews, according to a Wall Street Journal report. According to the report, this is about 10% of the employees who received low ratings in the reviews. Such a move by the company could indicate that more cuts are planned on the way, or indeed a second round of huge layoffs. According to the report, the company also cut bonus metrics.
To understand the program, the report mentioned that the two lowest ratings are: “meets most” and “meets some”. According to people familiar with the employee review program, employees who receive two “meets most” ratings in a row are placed in a performance improvement program, and those who receive the lowest are automatically placed in an improvement program. According to people familiar with the details, in management Meta The ratings are expected to lead many employees to leave in the coming weeks – and if not enough leave, the company will consider another round of layoffs. The reason for this lies in the fact that some employees who receive such ratings take it as a sign to look for new job opportunities.
A Meta spokesperson responded to the Journal report, saying, “We’ve always had a goal-based culture of high performance, and our review process is designed to encourage long-term thinking and high-quality work, while helping employees receive actionable feedback.”
According to other reports, Meta is expected to cut the layers of middle managers and save a billion dollars by the end of the year. Bloomberg reported that Meta requires many managers and directors to work in executive positions that contribute to development, or they will be required to leave the company. According to sources familiar with the details reported in Bloomberg, this process is called “flattening” – meaning to become more efficient by taking away these managers, offloading management responsibilities to others, and instead focusing on tasks such as coding, design and research. During this, the organization will undergo facelifts, and the layer of middle managers will be reduced. At Meta, the layer of middle managers differs from other companies in the multiplicity of matrix, administrative positions and some without the ability to make substantial decisions – due to the flat structure of the company. According to the report, the current round of cuts will be more gradual and spread over a longer period of time.
This report comes in the background of reports in several media outlets around the world that Meta plans to further reduce the number of its employees in the coming weeks. According to the Financial Times, the pace of work at the tech giant has slowed down a lot recently. According to reports so far, Meta is expected to announce the reorganization after it completes performance reviews of its teams during March. In the last investor call surrounding the publication of the company’s financial statements last month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted that this is not the end. He called this year the “Year of efficiency,” and even said: “I clearly said that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency, not the end of it.” .
Last November, the company fired 11,000 employees, which were about 13% of its global workforce, as part of a significant round of layoffs. These cuts were the largest in the history of the company and affected the organizational structure of a company. Since these layoffs, in the past months, it has been reported that Meta employees have faced concerns and anxieties about the potential for future cuts. Zuckerberg spoke out and said that he felt the organization was too slow and bloated, so he hinted that there would be more to come.
It should be mentioned, the number of employees at Meta almost doubled from 2019 to 2022, to 86 thousand employees. According to people familiar with the details, about half of employees have never experienced a typical company performance review cycle.
Since the beginning of the year, Meta’s stock has increased by approximately 36%, at the same time – the S&P500 index has increased by approximately 6% since the beginning of the year and the Nasdaq index has decreased by approximately 5% since the beginning of the year.