Meta targets more 'underperformers' in midyear reviews, memo says

Meta is expanding the ranks of its lowest-rated employees in their midyear performance reviews, months after it laid off nearly 4,000 employees whom it labeled low performers.

It's telling managers to put more employees in its "below expectations" tier, the lowest performance bucket, during this year's midyear performance reviews, according to a memo shared on Meta's internal forum on May 14, which was viewed by Business Insider. For teams of 150 or more, Meta wants managers to put 15% to 20% of employees in the bottom bucket compared with 12% to 15% last year.

The expanded range includes employees who have already left the company as part of "nonregrettable attrition," Meta's term for staff considered noncritical to operations, including those who resigned or were dismissed for underperformance.

The midyear performance review process is "an opportunity to make exit decisions," the memo said. It added that "there will be no company-wide performance terminations, unlike earlier this year," and that leaders are expected to manage the performance of their reports.

Managers can select employees for performance cuts based on criteria including a "below expectations" rating in their midyear review, if they were formally disciplined within the past six months, or if they had an "employee relations" case in the first quarter. Those cases are when an employee was on a plan to manage their performance.

The review process is set to begin on June 16, and conversations between managers and employees on performance are scheduled for between July and August.

The change comes months after Meta laid off nearly 4,000 employees — about 5% of its workforce — over their performance. Internal documents seen by BI earlier this year suggested such layoffs could become an annual fixture, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling staff he had "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and move faster to "move out low-performers."

Meta declined to comment.

The new midyear targets echo a move Meta made at the end of 2022 when it roughly doubled the share of employees placed in its lowest performance categories during annual reviews. At the time, managers were instructed to classify up to 16.5% of staff as underperformers, up from the previous range of 7% to 12%.

As with the current midyear cycle, that figure included employees already marked for nonregrettable attrition. The company also told managers to be more rigorous when evaluating employees on the borderline between performance tiers.

The repeated tightening of performance review criteria underscores Meta's effort to reshape its workforce following years of overhiring. Meta executives have increasingly used performance management as a mechanism to streamline teams and cut costs. Meta's human resources leaders have emphasized a need to "move faster" in managing out underperformers so that new, stronger talent could be brought in.

Meta's move mirrors a broader trend in the tech industry, where companies are sharpening their focus on performance while doubling down on artificial intelligence investments. Earlier this month, Microsoft said it would cut about 6,000 roles — roughly 3% of its global workforce — in an effort to trim layers of middle management and boost the ratio of coders to noncoders on projects. At Google, CEO Sundar Pichai told employees late last year that the company had reduced its top management ranks by 10% as part of an efficiency push.

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