‘People need to know we’re not underperformers’ – Meta employees with ‘at or above expectations’ ratings surprised by termination

USA: Meta’s job cuts on Monday surprised employees who were let go even though they claimed to have received “At or Above Expectations” ratings in their midyear reviews last year—the company’s middle tier in its performance review system.

According to Business Insider, eight affected employees were caught off guard when they discovered that their year-end performance ratings had been downgraded to “Meets Most,” a lower tier in Meta’s system, which made them eligible for the job cuts.

Meta had announced in January that it plans to reduce its workforce by about 5 per cent, affecting about 3600 employees who were “not meeting expectations”.

However, internal guidance seen by Business Insider from Hillary Champion, Meta’s director of people experience, revealed that managers were allowed to include higher-performing employees if they couldn’t meet their reduction targets from lower-rated staff alone. This detail had only been shared with managers, leaving some employees blindsided.

One affected employee said he was surprised when he received his termination email, claiming he had a “very solid performance history and no indicators of performance problems” in the past six months.

Some laid-off employees took to Workplace, Meta’s internal communications platform, to share their performance histories. One employee expressed confusion about being “unexpectedly” terminated, stating: “I still think this is an error”, as she had consistently met or exceeded expectations for four years before receiving a “Meets Most” rating late last year.

Others worried about being publicly labelled “low performers,” said it felt like they had a “scarlet letter” on their backs. “People need to know we’re not underperformers,” one said.

Meanwhile, some said they didn’t see it coming, based on past feedback from their managers, who had said they were doing great. 

Fortune reported that Kaila Curry, a former content manager at Meta, wrote on LinkedIn that she was always told she was doing a good job, was never put on a performance improvement plan (PIP), and never given corrective guidance or clear expectations. “I simply put in the work… I am not a low performer,” she wrote.

Another former Meta employee posted on LinkedIn yesterday, calling it “flat-out wrong” and misleading to be labelled a “low performer.”

Meta started its year-end performance review in December, but most employees hadn’t yet received their final ratings when the layoffs occurred. According to the report, a Meta spokesperson said employees are held to a “goal-based culture of high performance” and that past ratings do not mean they “consistently meet the bar”.

Meta’s job cuts could be a yearly event as the company lets go of low performers to make space to hire the “strongest talent” and stay ahead in the AI race. /TISG