Meta expands “below expectations” reviews as a new form of downsizing

According to an internal memo leaked to Business Insider, Meta is directing its managers to rate between 15 and 20 percent of employees in the "below expectations" category during midyear reviews starting June 16th. That's up from last year's 12 to 15 percent range.

Many believe this has nothing to do with an unexpected slump in output or slipping quality across the company. This is purely a numbers game, and increasingly, how performance management works in big tech.

Make no mistake, this move isn't aimed at improvement. It appears to be a mechanism to quietly manage attrition without public layoffs, severance costs, or negative press. A neat solution on paper. But a chaotic and highly unethical one in practice.

Meta is expanding the ranks of its lowest-rated employees in mid-year performance reviews, a move that could lead to more performance-based cuts.

Meta is telling managers to put more employees in “Below Expectations,” the lowest performance bucket during this year’s mid-year pic.twitter.com/xBNPf1JTBU

undefined Prof. Ahmed Banafa (@BanafaAhmed) May 21, 2025

A system designed to sort, not support

For teams of 150 or more, at least 15 percent of employees must be marked as underperforming. Some slots are already filled by people who resigned, took severance, or were previously let go. Others will be assigned to current employees, regardless of actual performance.

If your manager thinks everyone is doing well, it doesn't matter. They still have to label someone. That person could be you. The internal logic behind this is clear. Meta wants to trim quietly. The company can push more people out by raising the bar and mandating a bottom tier while claiming that it's raising standards.

There's no need for formal layoffs. There are no mass announcements. It's just a spreadsheet and a shifting quota where the cleanest layoff is the one that doesn't make headlines.

$Meta didn’t say layoffs ya'll. Clever, right?

They said:
👉 “15–20% of employees must now be rated ‘below expectations’ in midyear reviews.”
👉 “We’re not doing company-wide terminations.”
👉 “This is an opportunity to make exit decisions.”

You catching that?

Starting June… pic.twitter.com/0tcOLG6hjl

undefined Amanda Goodall (@thejobchick) May 22, 2025

When fairness isn't the point

Sadly, this isn't a new strategy. Stack ranking has been used in corporate America for decades. It rose to prominence during Jack Welch's tenure at GE and later entered Microsoft and Amazon. It has been criticized repeatedly for encouraging internal politics, damaging trust, and creating cultures where people work against one another rather than together.

What Meta is doing now fits that mold, just under a new brand and a quieter process, and it's not happening in a vacuum. This time around, the framing is softer. Meta says there won't be company-wide terminations, but managers have been instructed to treat this review period as a chance to make "exit decisions."

Microsoft has already made "performance-based job cuts" across departments." At Block, CEO Jack Dorsey said nearly half of the company's 931 layoffs were due to underperformance, even though the company had already removed formal improvement plans, leaving employees without a clear way to address concerns before being let go.

Reviews should reflect on strengths, weaknesses, and growth. But when a quota leads the process, it becomes something else entirely. A box to tick. A label to apply. A tool for managing attrition without owning it.

The real cost of forced rankings

Let's discuss the practical consequences. When everyone knows that someone has to fall to the bottom regardless of the results, people stop sharing. Knowledge hoarding has become common, and collaboration suffers.

Managers hire "sacrificial" recruits who know they can score low without hurting the team's standing. And those who care deeply about their work begin to disengage, knowing that merit is no longer the deciding factor.

In environments like this, even high performers feel vulnerable, especially if they're not visible or vocal or if they’re working remotely. Proximity starts to matter more than contribution. Recency bias creeps in, and managers are pushed to justify scores they may not believe in.

The long-term risk? Losing your best people, not because they failed, but because they no longer trust the process.

For those working inside Meta, the impact is likely already being felt. Conversations become guarded. The feedback feels performative. Peers start to feel like competition. Managers are caught between loyalty to their team and pressure from above. And even strong performers begin to question their standing.

This is what happens when you standardize subjectivity. It's not that the reviews themselves are inherently wrong; their intent has changed. You can't build culture through coercion. You can't build loyalty through fear. And you can't encourage growth by quietly preparing people for the exit door.

A broader wake-up call

This story isn't just about Meta. It's about companies' choices when they treat human beings as variables in a model. It's about the difference between performance management and performance manipulation. But we arguably lose so much more when transparency gives way to underhanded tactics.

The takeaway for any leader reading this is simple. You're not managing performance if your review system is designed to meet quotas instead of supporting people. You're managing headlines.

Microsoft is laying off nearly 7,000 employees.
That’s 3% of its global workforce—despite crossing $70B in quarterly revenue.

Divisions impacted: LinkedIn, Xbox, Azure, and middle management layers.
The reason? Not losses. Not underperformance.
But a shift—towards AI,…

undefined Yuriy Matso (@yuriymatso) May 14, 2025

If you're an employee, it might be time to ask a different question: Is your review about your work or someone else's spreadsheet? The most dangerous part of this story isn't the numbers but the normalization of the practice. Once stack ranking becomes the default again, the damage won't be limited to Meta, Block, and Microsoft.

Framing layoffs resulting from individual shortcomings shifts the narrative away from leadership's miscalculations. It allows companies to avoid difficult admissions around over-hiring, unrealistic bets on growth, or a lack of foresight in a shifting economy. And while it may calm investors in the short term, it corrodes something far more valuable in the long term: trust.

These aren't efforts to build stronger teams or foster innovation. They're damage control, dressed up as rigor. When performance becomes the scapegoat for poor planning, everyone inside the organization sees it for what it is. It's a story being written to protect optics, not people.

Businesses must stop confusing spin with strategy if they want to lead with credibility. Admit when forecasts missed the mark. Be transparent when roles change or disappear. When companies start treating talent decisions with the same honesty they demand from employees, they'll find the culture they've been chasing isn't built through fear or attrition.

It's built through truth, starting with retiring the performance excuse.

Rather than acknowledge that AI is reshaping roles and driving structural change, companies seem to be blaming so-called low performers to quietly shrink teams, mask broken promises, and avoid accountability.