Did they 'have' to label employees as low performers?
Every layoff I've ever been in did not mention such things, often they were shift or role related ... not explicitly stated to be performance related. Sure there were the folks or two you knew were on the block first, but also others who worked on a dead product or so forth.
Rules vary from state to state. But at least in Washington state, if you have "layoffs" then there are certain legal requirements that don't exist for "firings". One of them is that you can't hire someone for a substantially similar position for some period of time after the layoff. Facebook has specifically said that they want to replace the fired employees with new "higher quality" employees.
I'm not an expert on employment law but by labeling the fired workers as "low performing" they may trying to avoid things like paying unemployment compensation or legal repercussions for discriminatory layoffs.
I know personally several persons who absolutely didn't deserve to get fired. Some had a slow H2 2024 after years of high performance. Some were just plain unlucky that their team was dysfunctional at that time. And even worse, some people were on parental leave.
This doesn't seem like a good thing for the company. Productive employees must be replaced, new employees must be hired, trained. Teams need to reorganize. Morale is low.
Unclear to me what motivated this decision. The company is doing very well. Low performers have always been "managed out", but this time was very arbitrary.
I used to see Zuckerberg as someone mostly reasonable (compared to other loony CEO/billionaires) but this seems pretty irrational to me. I suppose the goal is to put stress to the remaining employees, and show some toughness to get a bit of appreciation from Trump/Musk. It's not right...
Every layoff I've ever been in did not mention such things, often they were shift or role related ... not explicitly stated to be performance related. Sure there were the folks or two you knew were on the block first, but also others who worked on a dead product or so forth.
Seems like a strangely unnecessary thing to note.