Months after Meta's high-profile culling of low performers, the stigma associated with the job cuts still stings.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg's push to "raise the bar on performance" saw about 5% of its workforce — roughly 3,600 employees — laid off in a sweeping round of cuts in February. The company said it targeted its lowest performers, but some former employees pushed back on that.
Some said they had received positive ratings months earlier. Others said they were on medical or parental leave, mid-transfer between teams, or hadn't received a formal rating yet. Some speculated that conflict with a manager was the deciding factor. As of late April, laid-off employees received severance payouts.
The eight accounts below offer a sense of how employees who were let go experienced the cuts and their concern about how it could affect their future. BI has verified the performance records of these ex-workers, who asked for anonymity because they fear the "low performer" label could hurt future job prospects.
A Meta spokesperson reiterated what the company previously shared with BI earlier this year about its low-performer cuts: "Let me be clear, these were performance-based terminations," the spokesperson said. "Prior ratings were not downgraded. Simply because someone had a history of meeting or exceeding expectations does not mean they continue to consistently meet the bar."
The spokesperson added that Meta employees are held accountable to a goal-based culture of high performance.
"Just part of Mark's mandate"
A former employee in Meta's human resources division had returned to work after being on parental leave for nearly five months when his division lost close to 10% of its staff. His mid-year review put him "At or Above Expectations" — the middle tier — but his year-end rating was "Meets Most," which made him eligible for termination.
"I tried calling my boss immediately, but in my heart, I knew it probably wasn't an error — Meta wouldn't make a mistake that significant." He said the manager was distressed but repeated: "I can't say anything. It's just part of Mark's mandate. It's a hard year."
He said he didn't know why he had been downgraded. "We can't even see the feedback our managers wrote for us," he said.
"Once the shock wore off, there was actually a mix of emotions — including some relief at being freed from that situation." But he does worry about carrying the low-performer label.
"It's one thing to be let go in a restructuring," he said. "It's another to have your professional reputation potentially damaged by being mischaracterized as an underperformer."
Cut, then recruited
A former senior machine learning engineer at Meta described the shock of being laid off, only for a Meta recruiter to invite her to reapply three days later and skip the interview process.
"Same email address. Same person. No acknowledgment of what had just happened. It felt surreal," she said.
She said she joined Meta in early 2024 and earned a mid-year review of "At or Above Expectations." Initially rated "Meets All Expectations" in the January 2025 year-end review, she was downgraded to "Meets Most Expectations" after a second round of director-level reviews. She said she suspects "directors were under pressure to hit a layoff quota."
Before the layoff, she was dissatisfied with her manager and sought a transfer to a top-tier team. It was approved, but she was told the move could lower her rating, so she waited — only to be pink-slipped. She said she's not taking the recruiter up on her offer.
Ultimately, she's confident she can land or create her next opportunity.
"I'll be fine. I can get another job or start something of my own."
Cut after a leave for burnout
A software engineer who joined Meta in May 2024 to work on cross-platform content sharing said a promising start unraveled due to internal politics over a new feature he prototyped. He said he took a four-month leave for burnout in August and returned in December to complete two more projects.
Two weeks before the layoffs, he said, his new manager told the team everyone was "safe." Then came the termination email — and a performance rating of "Meets Some Expectations," low on Meta's end-of-year rating scale.
"How could they evaluate my performance when I'd only worked 10 weeks in 2024?" he said, adding that an HR director had said he was "too new to evaluate."
Although he's now fielding interest from other companies and expects to receive 16 weeks of severance, he still feels the sting of his rating. "The harmful 'low performer' label still feels wrong," he said.
"Everything changed when I moved to Reality Labs"
A product manager joined Facebook as a contractor in 2018, converted to full-time in 2020, and consistently received year-end "Greatly Exceeds Expectations" ratings label.
In 2023, when she moved to Reality Labs, "everything changed," she said.
"My manager would call late at night to question my capabilities and create doubt, even though teammates gave me positive feedback," she said.
A review in early 2024 dropped her two tiers to "Meets All Expectations." Feedback included accusations that she was "blinded" by a "desire for promotion," she said. In August 2024, she took a 12-week disability leave "because I was physically ill from all the stress." She returned in November and was laid off in February.
She's being "selective" in her hunt for a new job. "The experience damaged my health, affected my family, and forced me onto medication for anxiety. I need to walk away from toxicity at the first sign, not wait until it affects my health and family again."
A templated response
This technical program manager was laid off after seven years of good performance ratings at Meta.
A reorganization placed her under a new manager a few months earlier — a shift she felt exposed her. "When managers have to meet quotas and choose someone to cut, people with less history on the team are at higher risk," she said.
"I contacted my manager in shock" after the termination notice, she said. "I just wanted five minutes to talk to ensure I wasn't going crazy." The manager responded with a templated email — the same company-approved language she had been required to use the day before when laying off her own direct report.
She still doesn't know exactly what led to their selection. "Was it because I had significant equity vested when the stock price was low?" she said. " Was it because I expressed disappointment about Meta rolling back DEI programs on internal forums? I'll never know — but there's clearly more to this story than simply cutting the lowest performers."
"The Hunger Games, but for high performers"
After 14 years at Google and three at Meta, this program manager said she was laid off despite a strong performance record: "At Meta, I'd even received 'Exceeds Expectations' and the rare 'Redefines Expectations.'" She said her manager told her she was doing "a great job" at the midyear review.
"I was candid with my manager — sometimes critically, but always constructively — about where I thought things could improve," she said. "I was transparent about how stress in my personal life was affecting me: my husband had been laid off, and we were caring for a special-needs child."
She said the manager said not to worry, but she had noticed a shift in tone at Meta — for example, CTO Andrew "Boz" Bozworth saying a worker who alleged mistreatment should just quit.
"The compassionate tone of the 2022 layoffs — the regret, the messaging about hard decisions — feels like a distant memory," she said. "This round was cutthroat. Silent. Cold. The Hunger Games, but for high performers."
"I wrote a final email to my skip-level manager," she added. "Not to get my job back. Not even to get a reply (I didn't). I just wanted to be heard. To say: I know I did good work. I know I didn't deserve this. And I hope someone — anyone — in leadership still has the humanity to care."
"This was about filling quotas"
This employee spent four years at Meta working on internal security systems, including tools to manage insider threats. He spent the weekend before the cuts making sure those would run smoothly on the day of the layoffs.
He had received consistently strong performance ratings, and said his managers agreed he was on track, but his termination letter assigned him a "Meets Most Expectations" rating. He said his managers didn't look at the self-review he submitted. "That told me everything. This wasn't about performance," he said. "This was about filling quotas."
"My manager said he 'stood by' the rating but wished he'd had more time and freedom to talk things through."
In his view, the company culture had grown increasingly cutthroat, with employees clinging to projects to boost their ratings, jockeying within the performance curve, and seeing dissent increasingly punished.
"Many people stay because the compensation is hard to walk away from, not because they believe in the mission. I was one of them. It was a place that offered scale and learning, but at a steep emotional cost," he said, adding that his healthy salary would have made him "an easy target" for cost-cutters.
"Companies can quietly rewrite the story of your career"
An engineer was laid off after five months of leave for a serious health crisis while in the middle of disability-related negotiations. He said his final performance rating — "Meets Most Expectations" — felt like "a scarlet letter."
"I wasn't underperforming," he said. Peer reviews before the leave had been entirely positive, and he saved "screenshots of it all for my lawyer."
His compensation exceeded $500,000, making him the highest-paid person on the team after his manager. He said he worked 60 to 75 hours before falling ill, but he sensed resentment after raising burnout concerns and stepping away from a major project.
"And after the layoff? Nothing. She didn't even say goodbye."
He said Meta's branding of laid-off workers as low performers "sets a dangerous precedent — companies can quietly rewrite the story of your career, and you don't get to fight back."
He's exploring legal options. "Meta is telling one story," he said. "And for many of us, it's not the truth."
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