- Meta has approved a major increase in executive bonuses amid strong Q4 earnings and a recent cull of so-called “low performers.”
Meta has approved a plan that could see company executives earning bonuses of up to 200% of their salaries.
The company said in an SEC filing it was increasing its “target bonus percentage” for named executive officers from 75% of their base salary to 200% of it. The changes will take effect from the 2025 annual performance period and do not include the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
The filing said the “variable cash incentives” were meant to “motivate its executive officers to focus on company priorities and to reward them for company results and achievements.”
The committee for Meta’s board of directors said the increase came after a review of other companies in the tech sector.
They said the company’s total cash compensation of executives “was at or below the 15th percentile of the target total cash compensation of executives holding similar positions” at peer companies. The increase will put Meta executives’ compensation in the “50th percentile of the peer group target cash compensation,” the company said in the filing.
The committee for Meta’s board of directors approved the percentage increase on Feb. 13, 2025.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune, which was made outside normal working hours.
The bonuses comes amid job cuts
The bonus increase comes just one week after Meta laid off around 5% of its workforce, around 3,600 employees.
The cuts were aimed at strengthening Meta’s operations after Zuckerberg declared 2025 “an intense year” and announced plans to heavily invest in the company’s AI efforts.
Meta told the affected workers it was terminating their employment due to “low performance,” but several have since publicly said they received better-than-average reviews and blasted the company on LinkedIn and online forums.
“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 a 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.”
Meta is not the only tech company targeting its so-called “low performers.” Big Tech rival Microsoft has also said it plans to target underachieving employees in a fresh 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 even said it plans to replace workers who have been laid off.
Several workplace experts previously told Fortune that, intended or not, the “low performance” label attached to the laid-off workers was highly subjective and potentially unfair.
Despite recent layoffs, Meta reported strong results in its Q4 2024 earnings, with revenue increasing 21% year-over-year to $48.4 billion, exceeding Wall Street expectations.
The company credited its advertising business and AI-driven product improvements for the growth. Zuckerberg has called 2025 a “really big year” which will see Meta’s AI assistant become the most widely used in the industry.
