After Meta laid off 3,600 of its “lowest performers” on February 10, some say they had good performance reviews, and experts say the label is highly subjective
- <strong>Meta said it was cutting low performers in its most recent round of cuts. However, some staffers and experts have questioned the company's methods.
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta’s February cuts follow a longer shift toward using performance assessments as a workforce lever. In 2023, sources reported that roughly 10% of staff received subpar ratings, alongside signals of further reductions in a tougher performance-review cycle.
A January memo had already framed a plan to cut about 5% of the lowest-rated workforce while backfilling roles, making the dispute over who qualifies as a low performer central to how employees interpret this round of layoffs.
First-order effects
- The 3,600 affected employees lose their roles under a performance-based rationale, while reports of positive prior reviews put the consistency of that rationale in question.
- For remaining staff and managers, the contested label raises the stakes of performance reviews and the need to understand how ratings translate into job security.
Second-order effects
- Meta may face pressure to apply and communicate more consistent evaluation criteria, since ambiguous ratings can weaken trust in managers and in the review process.
- Because Meta had said it intended to backfill roles after its planned performance cuts, hiring and internal mobility can become more tightly tied to which work the company considers strategically necessary rather than to overall headcount alone.
Third-order effects
- If companies increasingly use performance systems to execute reductions, annual reviews may evolve from development tools into a more explicit mechanism for reallocating labor—raising enduring questions about calibration, transparency, and appeal processes.
- The sequence from broader subpar-rating distributions to targeted performance cuts suggests that workforce planning can be embedded in evaluation design, though this coverage alone does not establish how broadly that approach will spread beyond Meta.
The trend: Performance management is becoming a more consequential workforce-planning tool, blurring the line between employee evaluation and organizational restructuring.