I feel like people are missing part of the memo where he said they will backfill all the roles.
You can say it's not fair or cruel but this isn't a layoff. They want to churn (maybe for cheaper talent? Maybe for H1-Bs?)
Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
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Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#72Performance reviews are bullshit. Being a "low performer" at Meta might mean you are not a suck-up, or that you have a sense of ethics.
Performance reviews aren't bullshit - it's crucial to have an objective (as objective as possible) system for measuring performance both to reward your high performers and to understand your low performers whether to provide support or to document reasons for firing them. Several kinds of performance management system such as mandatory percentages for each rating level ARE bullshit, but without performance management…
LLMs wrote this
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#73When I was an engineering manager there, engineering leadership described performance reviews as, in a large well run engineering organization, you'll probably be firing 5-10% of your employees every year for low performance. (Well, "non regrettable attrition", which includes people who quit when they get pipped.)
Lower than 5% at scale would be a red flag, not necessarily wrong, you don't want to "stack rank" with a quota and force managers to fire people who shouldn't want to be fired, but if you have 100 engineers in a department and only one of them gets fired in a year, probably the director is making a mistake.
So, I'm sure this won't be the only firing for the year at Meta. But this doesn't really seem like it's very far away from normal practices.
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#74This is your regular reminder that tech is essentially a fiefdom. Just because you aren't a serf doesn't mean you aren't a peasant.
Ah yes, the peasants who are free to leave at any time, get nice salaries and a nice severance at the end, plus a ton of benefits. Oh and at FB many can still WFH.
Big tech has problems, but lets not exaggerate - that undermines progress.
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#75It sounds like they're laying off 5% of the company, but are also firing the lowest 5% of employees without eliminating the role. > Meta is set to cut about 5% of its workforce, focusing on the company’s lowest-performing workers, CNBC confirmed Tuesday. > Another 5% of the 2024 employee base “who have been with the company long enough to receive a performance rating” will also be cut, Bloomberg reported, citing an i…
last quote is the key point and tracks with the other Vibe Shift press releases Mark has been on about. i read this as, there was a fear that laying off underperformers without very long PIP processes would be dangerous to the company, now he thinks it's less likely given the political landscape, so let's fire them ASAP rather than drawing it out.
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Performance reviews aren't bullshit - it's crucial to have an objective (as objective as possible) system for measuring performance both to reward your high performers and to understand your low performers whether to provide support or to document reasons for firing them. Several kinds of performance management system such as mandatory percentages for each rating level ARE bullshit, but without performance management…
> it's crucial to have an objective (as objective as possible) system for measuring performance both to reward your high performers and to understand your low performers whether to provide support or to document reasons for firing them. This isn't how it ever, ever plays out. Also, most companies implementing this clearly are doing so out of some sort of compliance, whether it be SOC or otherwise. So yea, lots of tim…
The alternative of not having a performance review problem involves having all of those problems with even more confusion, less visibility, and people trying to guess what will get them rewarded and usually guessing wrong.
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#77Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#78Watching Meta's downfall unfolding in real-time wasn't something I had on my 2025 bingo card.
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who are we to doubt Zuckerbergs judgement when his last big pivot to the Metaverse was such a success? Let him cook. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/22/mark-zuckerberg-envisions-1-...
You mean the one he took "personal responsibility" for, while laying off >10000 people and conveniently still having a job for himself?
"But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure." ~GB
Re: Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'
#80Performance reviews are bullshit. Being a "low performer" at Meta might mean you are not a suck-up, or that you have a sense of ethics.
Performance reviews aren't bullshit - it's crucial to have an objective (as objective as possible) system for measuring performance both to reward your high performers and to understand your low performers whether to provide support or to document reasons for firing them. Several kinds of performance management system such as mandatory percentages for each rating level ARE bullshit, but without performance management…
We have no idea how to measure management performance at scale, at basically any level, in any kind of reliable way. It takes PhDs and rare datasets to even start to make any kind of serious data-backed statements about what works and what doesn’t in management, and how to hire, train, and promote effectively. It’s basically all a black box that’s so hard to measure that the most any company does is pretend they’re using objective and relevant data for it, when in reality they’re mostly looking at noise.
Keep that in mind when anyone talks about how vital performance evaluations are. Management can’t even figure out non-bullshit ways to evaluate their own work.