Tech companies like Amazon and Meta are tightening their performance reviews. Here’s what that could signal, according to experts

Tech giants like Amazon and Meta are overhauling their performance review systems, and experts say the changes could signal even more layoffs or firings ahead.

Amazon, which on Jan. 28 announced 16,000 layoffs on top of its 14,000 cuts in October, is asking corporate employees to submit three to five “accomplishments,” Business Insider reported last month, citing people familiar with the matter and an internal document viewed by BI. The report notes the company has asked questions to that effect before but says this marks the first time Amazon has “explicitly formalized” its system across its entire corporate workforce around individual accomplishments.

At Meta, which in January announced layoffs affecting 1,000 employees, workers will now be categorized into the top 20%, a middle 70%, a lower 7% and the bottom 3%, BI separately reported, citing an internal employee memo. Top performers with “truly exceptional impact” will now see rewards of up to 300% of their base bonus.

“We’re evolving our performance program to simplify it and placing greater emphasis on rewarding outstanding performance,” a Meta spokesperson told Make It. “While our employees have always been held to a high-performance, impact-based culture, this new direction allows for more frequent feedback and recognition in a more efficient way.” Amazon did not provide comment to Make It.

Stack ranking, as in Meta’s system, isn’t uncommon in large companies, particularly in tech. “It’s not just stick, it’s also carrot,” says Saikat Chaudhuri, faculty director of the Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology Program and the Entrepreneurship Hub at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Nor is it new (or all that surprising) for an employer to ask workers to recap their accomplishments for the year when doing their performance reviews.

But the changes are also unfolding against a backdrop of mass layoffs from both firms, and across the broader economy. Job cuts announced last month hit their highest January total since 2009, according to a report released last week by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

When it comes to performance review crackdowns, “the most common reason companies do this is that they really want to shrink headcount,” says Peter Cappelli, professor of management at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources.

“It’s cheaper to fire people for poor performance than it is to lay them off,” Cappelli says.

Executives sometimes believe supervisors aren’t tough enough on “finding people who aren’t performing and doing something about it,” Cappelli says. Overhauling performance mandates, in tandem with changes like return-to-office orders and heightened surveillance to enforce those mandates, could mark an attempt to “regain power and control” following the employees’ labor market of the Great Resignation.

Companies may still be continuing to “right-size” after overhiring during the pandemic tech boom, Chaudhuri adds. During that time, “companies needed employees; they just couldn’t keep up,” Chaudhuri says. “Now, that’s not the case; now they want the highest performers.”

Companies may want staffers to spell out their accomplishments because “reporting relationships have been rearranged” after layoffs hit middle management ranks, Chaudhuri says. Managers suddenly taking on reports from other laid-off managers may not know the full extent of their new reports’ work.

Leaders might also be taking a page from Elon Musk’s book, Chaudhuri says. DOGE during its cost- and job-cutting drive asked federal workers to submit a list each week detailing what they got done.

Pressure from shareholders and the race to beat out competitors in the AI wars factor into the efficiency drive.

“This is an era of ferment,” Chaudhuri says, referring to AI. “Each business at every turn, especially when there’s a disruption, has to evaluate how they can run in the leanest fashion.”

U.S.-based employers announced 108,435 job cuts last month, up 118% from 49,795 cuts announced last January, and up 205% from 35,553 cuts announced in December, according to the Challenger report. (Roughly 40% of last month’s cut announcements come from Amazon and UPS alone.) The unemployment rate steadily ticked upwards over 2025 and hit a four-year high of 4.6% in November. 

In this context, the changes to performance reviews could have far-reaching repercussions. Fear of additional layoffs down the road and heightened scrutiny around day-to-day performance expectations could put the pressure on employees to work harder, Chaudhuri says.

It could also nudge employees who might be reviewed poorly to leave on their own to avoid potentially being cut, he adds. While this could save the companies some money on possible severance costs in the short term, the overhaul could ultimately be costly for the companies’ reputations.

When the labor market swings back in employees’ favor, companies will “have to make the incentives so strong for people to overlook the reputational downsides that might happen from this,” Chaudhuri says.

For now, Chaudhuri interprets the message tech companies are sending their employees to be this: “I need to work long hours, I need to put my best foot forward. It’s that time again.”

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