Meta offering 200 percent bonuses to execs after laying off thousands

Meta's top executives may see huge bonuses in the coming years, despite the company's forceful trimming of its workforce amid what CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to be a more challenging year for the company.

According to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Meta is proposing a new target bonus percentage that could see certain corporate executives receiving a bonus of 200 percent of their base salary. The number is more than double the 75 percent figure under the company's previous plan. Zuckerberg, for what its worth, isn't included in the new bonus structure.

Meta recently recently reduced its employee stock options by 10 percent, Business Insider reported, as its market value has gone up.

On Feb. 10, Meta released an internal memo to its workforce announcing the company would begin notifying "low-performing" employees that they were being laid off, part of a sweeping 5 percent cut to teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia that would see up to 4,000 Meta workers lose their jobs. A previously leaked memo from Zuckerberg explained the cuts were an efficiency effort ahead of what would be an "intense year" for the tech giant. Meanwhile, the company has increased the number of employees working on generative AI.

Shortly after the layoffs, affected employees took to business social networking platform LinkedIn to share their experiences at Meta and push back against the corporation's "low-performing" characterization, harnessing the platform's #OpenToWork tag in their own defense. Last year, amid even larger workforce cuts, Meta employees took to platforms like TikTok to fight the company's "efficiency" moves.