Meta just laid off 600 employees, now it’s asking employees to review their performance using AI
Meta is reportedly deepening the use of artificial intelligence within internal operations, amid reports of laying off 600 staff members from its AI team.
Meta is strengthening its workforce as well as doubling down on artificial intelligence. Just days after the company reported laying off nearly 600 employees in its AI division, the company is now reportedly encouraging remaining employees to use its internal AI chatbot, MetaMate, to help prepare their performance reviews.
According to a recent report from Business Insider, Meta is now asking managers to review employees who use AI software. Meta’s MetaMate platform works similarly to tools like ChatGPT and can mine internal documents, summarizing projects, accomplishments, and feedback to assist employees during the year-end appraisal cycle. The chatbot was created as part of Meta’s expanding suite of internal AI systems. The software is being introduced as a way to streamline one of the most time-consuming corporate rituals of writing self-assessments and peer reviews.
Speaking about his experience using MetaMate during the TechEquity AI Summit in Sunnyvale, California, Joseph Spisak, product director of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, explained that the tool can “search all my documents and see what I’ve done and summarize what I’ve done for the year and my accomplishments and the feedback on me”, calling the feature “great.” According to Spisak, the assistant effectively acts as a personal work historian, compiling detailed records in seconds that might otherwise take employees hours to recall and structure.
According to the report, Meta has not issued any formal directive mandating the use of MetaMate for reviews, and its adoption varies between teams. Some employees use it heavily to prepare self-evaluations, while others reportedly view it primarily as a template generator for peer review. A Meta employee told Business Insider that while the tool is useful for creating feedback frameworks, it often struggles without detailed context about individual projects, meaning staff need to refine the output and fine-tune it.
In particular, Meta’s pressure to use AI-assisted software like this for employee reviews is a stressful moment for employees. The company has reportedly fired 600 employees as part of a broader effort to reduce organizational layers and speed up execution in its artificial intelligence organization, in what Mark Zuckerberg described as Meta’s “year of efficiency.” Employees in the AI infrastructure, Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team and other product-focused groups are said to have been affected by the recent job cuts, while new hires at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs – brought on as part of the company’s massive AI investment – have reportedly been largely spared. Those affected will receive 16 weeks of severance pay plus additional weeks depending on their tenure.
In an internal memo to employees, Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexander Wang, called the recent job cuts an important plan to create a more agile and efficient organization while eliminating bureaucratic tasks and allowing remaining employees to have a greater scope of influence.
