Mark Zuckberg’s Meta raises executive bonus by outrageous amount after laying off thousands

While thousands of Meta employees face layoffs, the company’s top executives are getting a major pay boost. 

Just days after cutting about 5 percent of its workforce, Meta’s board approved significant increases to executive bonuses, ensuring that top leadership takes home substantially more cash in 2025.

A Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday revealed that all named executive officers — except CEO Mark Zuckerberg — will see their annual cash bonuses rise sharply, in some cases double the amount of their salary. 

In 2023, Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li, Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox, and Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan each earned salaries of roughly $1 million, received $20 million in stock and collected around $1 million in bonuses. 

Under a new formula, those bonuses are set to increase dramatically.

Previously, executive bonuses were calculated by multiplying an executive’s salary by two performance-based percentages: a ‘target bonus percentage’ (set at 75 percent in 2023) and a ‘company performance percentage’ (which was 1.5 percent last year). 

This resulted in bonuses that slightly exceeded their base salaries. But on Feb. 13, Meta’s board compensation committee approved a change that raises the target bonus percentage from 75 percent to 200 percent. 

If applied last year, Bosworth’s bonus would have jumped from about $1 million to roughly $2.8 million. 

The final payout will still depend on Meta’s company performance percentage, which remains unknown for 2025.

Meta justified the raise by arguing that its executive pay was lagging behind industry peers like Google, Apple, Netflix, Disney, Uber and Comcast. 

According to the filing, its top executives were previously earning at or below the 15th percentile in cash compensation compared to those at similar companies. 

With the updated bonus structure, their earnings will now be closer to the industry average.

The generous bonus increases come at a time when Meta is aggressively cutting costs elsewhere. 

The company is investing heavily in artificial intelligence while scaling back employee stock awards, according to reports from The Financial Times and Business Insider. 

Despite the layoffs and spending cuts, Meta’s leadership is now poised to collect millions more in cash bonuses.

This comes after Zuckerberg laid off 3,600 staff  in a shock culling spree designed to target ‘low performing’ staff.

Meanwhile, Microsoft said in January it is pausing hiring in the US for its consulting unit. It also axed other roles earlier that month.

Meta had approximately 72,400 employees as of September.

‘I´ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,’ Zuckerberg said.

The CEO said the performance-based cuts are intended to ensure that the company has the ‘strongest talent’ and is able to ‘bring new people in.’ In all, he hoped to wipe out about five percent of his workforce. 

‘We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,’ he said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg.

‘But now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.’

Impacted employees have come forward to challenge the perception that Zuckerberg simply wanted to cut the dead weight, insisting that excuse was just a ‘corporate facade.’

‘This wasn’t about performance; it was about workforce reduction in favor of AI initiatives,’ former Meta content manager Kaila Curry said.

‘Maybe I ”lacked masculine energy” (to quote Mark Zuckerberg himself). Who knows?’

Curry said she received an ‘exceeds expectations’ result in her most recent mid-year review, and often asked for feedback about her performance.

‘I was always told I was doing a good job,’ she said.

‘I was never placed on a PIP, never given corrective feedback, and never properly mentored or provided clear expectations. I simply put in the work – often on weekends – while being isolated in an empty office.’

The layoffs come amid broader changes at Meta, in advance of Donald Trump returning to the White House on January 20.

Zuckerberg has recently aligned more closely with conservative ideas and political figures, including having dinner meetings with Trump and nominating a Republican as Meta’s head of public affairs.

In early January, Zuckerberg announced the end of the company’s US fact-checking program that aimed to combat misinformation on its platforms. 

The program had faced criticism from conservative voices who viewed it as censorship.

Under the new system, users will be able to add context to posts, similar to features on X, formerly Twitter, and championed by Elon Musk, the platform´s owner.

The company has also scaled back its diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, particularly regarding certain forms of hostile speech.