Meta have laid off talent, not "low performers"

8 points by frankharrison 1 year ago | 2 comments

Yesterday I started to hear from friends and people I used to mentor that they’ve been laid off by Meta.

The press says it’s “low performers” and the by people I know are anything but - if we had the funds to hire right new we would, no questions no interviews because I know how good they are! A couple of them are 10x’ers, so “low performers” my hat.

Some of these people were on teams bought by Meta because they were out-performing Meta, and some of them had pretty tasty golden-handcuffs to incentivise them to stay, simply because they were that good! Most of them passed some pretty rigorous interviews and were placed on pretty cutting-edge teams, so to call them “underperforming” and imply they’re the bottom 10% is incredibly damaging and untrue.

It’s also likely a marketing play giving energy to one of the classic tropes in tech, that “only the bad ones get fired” and “I’ll be safe because I’m good” - that is, ignoring the imposter syndrome that we all get.

From what I’m seeing the reality is that Meta have made cuts on tech they no longer feel is valuable, like the Metaverse and AR, then painting a picture like it’s the fault of the poor people they’ve let go for being “low performers”. Not cool and I really feel for everyone who’s been affected. Sad times.

Ohhh I wonder if there’s class action lawsuit in the cards for “slander”.

gregjor 1 year ago |

I think people in the business will understand that most of the people laid off lately didn't get axed because of low performance, at least not their own. Massive layoffs and ham-fisted announcements about cutting "low performers" only tell one story: incompetent management, over-hiring, and companies out of ideas or too risk-averse (in terms of "shareholder value").

Zuckerberg has spearheaded the ongoing failure of "the metaverse" wasting billions of dollars, but he can't get fired. Other people pay the price for the low performers on the board, the C-suite, and in management roles. I think we know it always works that way, Meta/Facebook doesn't stand alone, they just stand a bit taller than the rest of the dysfunctional corporations.

Slander and defamation suits would require proof that Meta made false statements about individuals. I don't think that would get anywhere because we don't have any objective reference for "performance," only whatever internal metrics Meta supposedly used. However, wrongfully interfering with someone's employment or employment prospects -- like giving a false or misleading reference -- might have some traction. By announcing this so-called "low performers" cut in the press Meta has labeled everyone subsequently laid off as a "low performer," which may very well interfere with future employment. Even if not malicious it stands out as a very dumb thing to announce or leak, when they could have blamed layoffs on canceled projects or overhiring or restructuring or something vague like that. But no way will Meta management take responsibility, so they have to pretend they have meaningful and objective measures of performance.

ggm 1 year ago |

If they had golden handcuffs then the exit fee has massive NDA.