At Meta this month, top execs and rank-and-file staff have been on wildly different rides. First, the Menlo Park company started laying off thousands of workers, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg framing the 5% cut as a way to “shift out low-performers quicker.” Then, just days after the layoffs launched, his fellow executives were gifted a hefty raise.
The parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram announced in a Securities and Exalter Commission filing on Thursday that except for Zuckerberg, named executive officers will now see a major boost to their yearly bonutilizes. In 2023, the four execs created salaries of around $1 million, received $20 million each in stock and obtained bonutilizes of around $1 million. For 2025, the math on those bonutilizes is altering.
The executives — Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer, Susan Li, the chief financial officer, Christopher Cox, the chief product officer, and Javier Olivan, the chief operating officer — all receive annual cash bonutilizes. Per filings, those are calculated by taking an exec’s salary, then multiplying it by two different percentages. One is called “tarreceive bonus percentage,” while the other is called “company performance percentage” and is based on the achievement of company goals.
To calculate bonutilizes for 2023, Meta multiplied each salary by 0.75 (“tarreceive bonus”) and then by 1.5 (“company performance”). The executives’ bonutilizes concludeed up being just higher than their salaries.
The new alter, approved on Feb. 13 by a compensation committee on the company’s board, boosts the “tarreceive bonus” variable from 75% up to 200%. Bosworth obtained around a $1 million bonus in 2023, but with the new variable, it would’ve been about $2.8 million. (It remains to be seen what Meta’s “company performance” variable will be for 2025.)
Meta explained the raises in Thursday’s filing by writing that the executives were at or below 15th percentile of cash compensation for execs in Meta’s peer group. This group includes companies such as Google, Apple, Netflix, Disney, Uber and Comcast — tech or media giants that compete for talent and have huge valuations. With the increases to bonus payments, Meta wrote, their top executives will now receive roughly average cash pay for executives in the peer group. (Stock units are not considered in this calculation.)
The larger bonutilizes come despite Meta’s push to dump cash into artificial innotifyigence investment — and to cut costs to pay for that binge. Both the Financial Times and Business Insider reported this week that Meta is cutting down some of the stock awards it gives to staff.
Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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