Meta’s ‘low performer’ layoffs disputed by fired staffers and criticized by experts

The CEO has been warning of the cuts since mid-January, telling staffers via a memo that the company had raised “the bar on performance management” and was planning to “do more extensive performance-based cuts.”

But when the cuts hit earlier this week, several workers took to LinkedIn to express their confusion at being laid off in the so-called “performance-based cuts.”

One former Meta employee said she was cut despite receiving an “exceeds expectations” rating on her midyear review. 

“I frequently asked for feedback and was always told I was doing a good job,” Kaila Curry, an ex-content manager at Meta, wrote in the LinkedIn post.

“I was never placed on a PIP [performance improvement plan], never given corrective feedback, and never properly mentored or provided clear expectations. I simply put in the work… I am not a low performer.”

“I was let go today—but not because I was a ‘low performer,’” another LinkedIn user, Steven S., said. “Let’s be clear: that label is misleading, and for many of us, it’s flat-out wrong.”

Meta has not clarified how it is categorizing the affected employees and did not respond to Fortune‘s questions on the subject.

‘Low performance’ label highly subjective and potentially unfair

Several workplace experts told Fortune that, intended or not, the “low performance” label attached to the laid-off workers was highly subjective and potentially unfair.

“It’s a terrible way to be labeled and is clearly unhelpful for anyone in a job market,” Sally Maitlis, a professor of organizational behavior and leadership at Saïd Business School, said.

Being called a low performer at Meta may not mean workers will automatically be low performers in other environments, Dan Cable, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, said.

“These people might be superstars elsewhere,” he said. “So it feels to me like it’s extra punitive because these are people that probably have a really high market value.”

Not only could this affect a worker’s future job prospects, but the label could be misleading.

“There are a hundred ways of measuring performance at work and challenges caused by capturing individual performance within teams (when there is a risk of free-riding), or creative and innovative work (where performance is not objectively measurable),” said Thomas Roulet, a professor and organizational sociologist at the University of Cambridge.

He told Fortune that being a low performer was a “vague umbrella term” that was “a seemingly objective criterion while being entirely subjective.”

“Some people might feel they are doing exactly what they are asked to do and more and yet be considered low performers because their work does not contribute to value creation,” he said.

Company strategy over individual performance

The decision on which employees to cut could be more about strategy and general management than about each employee’s contribution.

“If you are not performing, it might be because the activities you are asked to carry are the wrong ones,” Roulet said. “Finding opportunities through innovation and creativity takes time and might well translate into low performance in the short run.”

Meta may also have teams it’s more invested in than others.

For example, the company plans to invest heavily in AI and AI talent, and has expressed interest in automating some coding work.

Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at Wharton University, said communication about individual performance could also be to blame.

“Performance management is terrible in most organizations; they don’t do a good job at all of telling people how they’re doing, and if the extent to which they might do a good job,” he said.

Decisions may be made on a relative basis in some departments rather than across the organization as a whole.

“It could very well be that you didn’t hit the low performer distribution and your performance appraisals because you are part of a group where everybody is adequately performing, nobody’s on a performance improvement plan or anything, but you were the worst performer, and the lowest performer in your group,” he explained.

Tech goes after ‘low performers’

Meta is not the only tech company to publicly blame its latest round of cuts on performance issues.

Microsoft has also said it plans to target low performers in a round of cuts.

The shift is a tone change from mass tech layoffs in recent years, which have largely been blamed on cost-cutting. Meta has said even it plans to replace workers who have been laid off.

“It’s not new that a firm lays off people who are performing less well or who seem less able to adapt to changes required of them, but it is unusual to describe performance as the central or sole basis for layoffs, especially when the cuts are so extensive,” Maitlis said.

Getting tough on performance could be an attempt to send a message of strength to investors.

“The fact that they are backfilling means it’s not that they need fewer people. It’s that they felt that they had to…clean house, as it were, and try to get rid of their worst performers,” Cappelli said. “Maybe they think the investors like that.”

There’s also overwhelming research that layoffs negatively affect a company’s culture and can impact its reputation with potential applicants.

The fact that tech companies are OK with cutting and replacing employees may speak to a larger shift in the industry.

“It highlights the pressure many tech firms currently feel and their willingness in this climate to sacrifice the reputations of their employees in order to sound performance-focused and business-wise to their shareholders and perhaps also to new people they will be looking to recruit,” Maitlis said.

“It may also be a reflection of the prevailing shift towards low care and consideration that seems to be sweeping through the U.S. at present.”