Layoff angst looms over Meta employees as they face tough performance reviews and ongoing reorgs

A tough annual performance review season at Meta and a newly permanent state of “efficiency” has some workers preparing for the worst.

The company’s months-long process of evaluating individual employee performance for 2023 is wrapping up this week, with tens of thousands of workers receiving feedback from Meta managers.

Although most employees will find themselves with reviews that mean they will be keeping their jobs for another year, others fear they will not be so lucky.

As CEO Mark Zuckerberg has turned last year’s “Year of Efficiency” into a “a permanent part of how we operate going forward,” it has become a point of pride for some managers to have smaller teams that get more done with fewer people, two people familiar with the company said. Zuckerberg, for instance, has heaped praise on the small team that built and maintains the new platform Threads.

Meanwhile, several organizations within Meta are still undergoing reorganizations that are expected to see some workers laid off this month. Although such cuts are expected to be incremental, 18 months of layoffs at Meta and across Big Tech have left many workers in constant fear of losing their jobs.

Starting with its first mass layoff at the end of 2022, Meta has cut 22% of its workforce. Its stock price meanwhile hit a record in early March. The company recently told employees that their bonuses would be increased due to the company’s financial performance over the last year.

One such organization going through changes is Instagram, which recently did away with the job of technical program manager, effectively resulting in an incremental layoff of a few dozen workers, as Business Insider reported.

The augmented-reality department within Reality Labs is also undergoing a reorg, the people familiar said, as the department is changing the scope of its work this year and currently allocating headcount. Meta is said to be shifting more resources into generative AI and glasses projects, and away from things like app development and Horizon Worlds, its main metaverse offering that has struggled to gain traction.

“Meta has always done a lot of reorgs, moving people around, eliminating teams,” a third person familiar with the company said. “But now everyone is hyper aware of layoffs and it’s tough to find new jobs.” The people familiar asked not to be identified discussing private matters. A Meta spokesman declined to comment.

Like TPMs at Instagram, many people that are impacted by reorganizations are being offered three months to find a new position within Meta. If they fail to do so, they will lose their job.

As for performance reviews, some people who receive lower ratings are also being offered three months of severance to simply leave the company, without going through a formal PIP process, one of the people familiar said. Compliance with a return-to-office mandate enacted six months ago is also a larger part of performance reviews, one of the people said, noting that manager enforcement of RTO has lately become “a lot more strict.”

An employee previously told BI that employees deemed to have subpar performance “will be pushed out, one way or another.” Although it is still possible for a person who receives a lower performance ranking, such as “needs support,” to go through a PIP process successfully, moving people out more quickly is “just the process now,” the person added.

Are you a Meta employee or someone else with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com or on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.