by paxys on 1/14/25, 6:45 PM
So in the first two weeks of the year Zuck has announced:
- Replacing their global policy chief with the company's highest ranking Republican.
- Appointing Dana White to the company's board.
- Changing content policies to be aligned with the incoming administration.
- Elimination of DEI programs in hiring.
- Removing tampons from men's restrooms.
- Defending all this in a 3 hour Joe Rogan interview. Ranting about the lack of "masculine energy" at the company.
- 5% layoff of low performers. Company needs to get "intense".
Is this history's most bizarre midlife crisis? What is going on with this man?
by lacker on 1/14/25, 5:47 PM
When 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.
by yodsanklai on 1/14/25, 5:29 PM
It seems Zuck is turning into Elon. What's next? closing the European offices? forcing people to return to the office? relocating HQ to Texas?
by tedivm on 1/14/25, 5:43 PM
It 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 internal memo.
And a direct quote from Zucky:
> I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster. We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle, with the intention of back filling these roles in 2025.
by htrp on 1/14/25, 5:08 PM
Putting all of the employees on notice to keep their heads down and do their jobs without comment or complaint.
by aithrowawaycomm on 1/14/25, 5:51 PM
> Below is Zuckeberg’s[sic] internal memo, which CNBC obtained.
Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies of the world. AI, glasses as the next computing platform and the future of social media.
It's very funny that he included the Ray-Bans here. Maybe it will be the next iPhone, but along with Meta Worlds (or whatever it's called), Zuckerberg simply goes all-in on dumb sci-fi toys. Considering this is pure childish impulse - VR itself didn't make the top 3 in the memo - I wonder if he'll rename the company to Specs Technologies.
by GiorgioG on 1/14/25, 5:24 PM
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
by wnevets on 1/14/25, 5:50 PM
Is the person who though it was a great idea to spend billions of dollars on the metaverse gonna be put on a performance plan or are performance reviews only meant for the peasants?
by ks2048 on 1/14/25, 5:32 PM
This must be the "masculine energy" Zuckerberg was referring to.
by bsnnkv on 1/14/25, 5:53 PM
I really don't see Meta's social
media products being able to compete with new challengers without lobbying to have them banned, even less so if they keep driving away talent.
The migration of US TikTok users to Xiaohongshu this week, to the point where it is #1 on the US app store while still having half of its UI in Mandarin has been particularly eye opening.
by Bluecobra on 1/14/25, 5:22 PM
Next up: We need you to come in 5 days a week. Think of our culture!
by VirusNewbie on 1/14/25, 5:47 PM
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?)
by yoyohello13 on 1/14/25, 5:33 PM
This is clearly to cull the "wrong thinking" employees.
by Over2Chars on 1/15/25, 2:12 AM
What about the dead wood managers?
I'd like to see 5% of engineering managers get cut every year, since they're either selecting for, or I suspect creating, disengaged employees.
by cbsmith on 1/14/25, 5:37 PM
I have a strong suspicion that recent pivots are intended to drive attrition, and this just confirms my thinking.
by canttestthis on 1/14/25, 5:59 PM
Gave my notice yesterday, last day of work is Feb 3... 7 days before the layoff.
by shombaboor on 1/14/25, 5:35 PM
the 5% who didn't watch enough MMA or improve their PR in the deadlift
by paxys on 1/14/25, 6:30 PM
The noteworthy part here is that low performers won't be put on a PIP (which happens every year at this time). Come February the bottom 5% of the list will be given a severance and shown the door.
by TypingOutBugs on 1/14/25, 5:29 PM
Part of Zucks plan to stop hiring mid-level engineers this year (as he said on JRE)?
I am very very skeptical of this idea - what do you all think?
by paxys on 1/14/25, 6:39 PM
If you are a Meta employee and got sizable RSU grants around 2022-23 when the stock price was 1/5 what it is now, you should probably start packing your bags. Whatever your performance is, there's zero chance it can justify those upcoming paychecks.
by tqi on 1/14/25, 5:51 PM
> “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said in the memo
Doesn't this beg the question of why the bar wasn't higher the whole time?
by jhack on 1/14/25, 5:49 PM
Watching Meta's downfall unfolding in real-time wasn't something I had on my 2025 bingo card.
by anothername12 on 1/14/25, 5:34 PM
You're not getting fired now, you're getting "moved out" or "exited"
by m348e912 on 1/14/25, 5:59 PM
Can anyone from FB explain the user hostile UI? Reading comments or posts is an exercise in futility. Resizing or moving a page will result in a refresh where you lose your place or can no longer find what you were reading. Is this an accidental side affect of design or do you guys sit in a conference room conjuring up ways to make user experience miserable?
by taimurkazmi on 1/15/25, 12:50 AM
“intense” in the corporate world means grind our employees to dust.
by henning on 1/14/25, 5:52 PM
2025 is going to be the year the metaverse really takes off. I can feel it. People definitely want Zuck's shitty VR 3D walled garden with worse graphics than a Nintendo Wii.
by forty on 1/14/25, 5:42 PM
Why do people still have accounts on Twitter and Facebook already? Those reactionary billionaires are clearly offensive to humans and we should collectively tell them to f*ck off
by nojvek on 1/15/25, 1:34 PM
Usually it’s the engineers that go at the bottom. Yet most of the inefficiencies come at management layer having a long chain of command.
by asveikau on 1/14/25, 5:18 PM
Performance 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.
by neilv on 1/14/25, 5:52 PM
>
We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle, with the intention of back filling these roles in 2025.Are they effectively saying that anyone terminated this year is probably for poor performance?
Usually there's more ambiguity, like changing business priorities.
by orsenthil on 1/14/25, 5:45 PM
That is 5% of 67,317, around 3700 people, folks.
by ein0p on 1/14/25, 5:55 PM
5% is nothing. Any FANG could lose 30% at least and all metrics would only improve. People working there know this. There's an unbelievable amount of fat in these companies. The main issue is that often during these cuts it's not the fat but the "muscle" that gets cut. The "fat" is good at sticking around.
by LucidLynx on 1/14/25, 5:16 PM
As AI is everything right now, did they asked to Llama how to solve the situation...?
by avgDev on 1/14/25, 5:17 PM
"Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'h1b workers'".
by jayd16 on 1/14/25, 5:33 PM
Just when I thought maybe I could give Meta kudos for some respectable VR/game engineering and some open AI research, they seem to bend over backwards to keep a terrible reputation.
by asdev on 1/14/25, 5:26 PM
how much more confirmation do we need that we are in a recession?
by qgin on 1/14/25, 8:18 PM
This definitely cuts costs, but I’m still unclear what Meta’s long term business plan is. They’re giving away Llama to get open source contributions to help them… do what?
by magxnta on 1/16/25, 11:50 AM
Oh, he is cutting the „low performers“. I’m glad that he isn’t kicking the guy who wasted BILLIONS on the metaverse though. :)
by ChrisArchitect on 1/14/25, 5:09 PM
by rvz on 1/14/25, 9:22 PM
Well it was already admitted by Zuck, wasn't it? [0]
Also Microsoft was the first large domino to announce cutting "underperforming" staff and now Meta is doing the same. [1]
Unfortunately, there will be copycats taking notes to use "AI" as an excuse to accelerate more layoffs for AI or cheaper labor.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42687606
[1] https://archive.ph/NZT1w
by siva7 on 1/14/25, 8:08 PM
Could it be this isn't really about low-performing folks but about employees and teams who don't fit his new political agenda?
by philk10 on 1/14/25, 6:08 PM
those who have not increased their neck size in the last year will be first to go
by Ancalagon on 1/14/25, 6:47 PM
Can someone explain why there is so much porn on fb/ig these days?
by taikocat on 1/15/25, 6:24 PM
Meta is a great China company but I won't use it anymore.
by k33n on 1/14/25, 5:43 PM
Zuck is doing great things over there!
by crowcroft on 1/14/25, 5:41 PM
This 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.
by sloroo on 1/15/25, 7:25 AM
It'd be nice if the contract was just for a year with extensions, not this at-will BS which doesn't even hold true (the way it's perceived as "having" a job) for some randomly selected people judged by one random manager as "low performers".
by mtkd on 1/14/25, 5:57 PM
What Meta has been publishing on reasoning recently is very impressive -- I imagine they have internal product that is even further ahead
Senior engineers can now get answers in seconds to questions it might have taken a junior a couple days to figure out ... agents are starting to do comparable workflows to low/mid-skilled ops/support teams in some verticals at a fraction of cost
If Meta, and others pushing on AI, are not reducing heads in 2025 -- it would kind of undermine the value of the massive investments they are making
HN commentariat coupling this to anything else is a bit disingenuous as most engineers I know are talking about this a lot right now as nobody really knows where it leads -- with some discussion about whether it is comparable to horses being replaced by cars in 1920s and employment redeploying elsewhere over time
by jamesblonde on 1/14/25, 5:36 PM
It's all cool. Zuck is just riffin'
/s