Meta's upper ranks are feeling the heat of permanent efficiency.
The company formerly known as Facebook is looking to whittle down its hundreds of vice presidents, according to three people with knowledge of the company.
As CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes what was a year of efficiency — in which more than 20,000 Meta employees were laid off — into a "permanent part" of how Meta operates, executives are not being shielded from tougher performance standards and ongoing reorganizations that are leading to incremental cuts to teams.
The number of vice presidents at Meta peaked last year at about 300 individuals with that title, according to one of the people familiar. That number grew from about 180 individuals in previous years.
While a handful of VPs left the company last year in the run-up to a second wave of mass layoffs, Zuckerberg is looking to get the total number of VPs at Meta closer to 250, the person added. There are five levels of VP within the title.
"The overall goal is still to reduce the people in the middle and at the top and increase people on the bottom," the person said. "It's getting middle-heavy and top-heavy again."
A Meta spokesman declined to comment, pointing Business Insider to earlier public comments by Zuckerberg about the company's work on efficiency.
Last year, Zuckerberg said he no longer wanted a company of "managers managing managers," and Meta went about "flattening" some of the reporting structure. But Meta continued last year to honor something referred to internally as "lagged promos," wherein people who are up for a promotion to a new level often work for a year in a new role before their title changes. It led to some growth in management and executive ranks that weren't exactly planned under a new era of forever efficiency, two of the people familiar said.
VP ranks are thinning through half-year "calibrations," effectively soft performance reviews that occur mid-year at Meta, and through the formal performance-review process that occurs once a year, typically during the first quarter.
Meta VPs are subject to "stack ranking," a process popular in tech in which peers are evaluated against each other to see who has performed better. Their work and impact are being "really scrutinized," another of the people familiar said.
They're also subject to a companywide mandate for performance reviews that requires managers to put between 10% and 12.5% of their teams into lower performance categories, which often leads to being put on a performance improvement plan, or PIP.
While the mandatory range for lower performers is lower than it was around the time of Meta's mass layoffs (14.5% to 16.5%), it's still higher than it was prior to those layoffs (7% to 10.5%). Such a performance review often leads to being laid off or, in the case of some VPs, being told in advance that your position is being eliminated.
"Some people are leaving because they're getting other jobs, some people because of their performance," one of the people said. "Some people are struggling with changes or getting caught up in changing priorities."
Are you a Meta employee or someone with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@jkmperu.com or on the secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.
