Metas philosophy (based on what an ex Meta person told me) is “up or out”

So if you aren’t getting a promotion, you are eventually getting fired. This meat grinder probably has some perverse incentives for employees and makes sure you are always churning through folk who you don’t need to pay QoL raises to

it's only up or out until you reach a terminal career level (E5)

That sounds again like Huawei and those China companies

I'm confused. The article specifically states that Meta cut 25% of its workforce since 2022 (that's not counting the 5% that are being reported). What overhiring?

Have you looked at their numbers on and before 2022? They very much over-hired a crazy amount. Zuckerberg admitted as such through his statements on "over investing".

https://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/mark-zuckerberg-layoff-mes...

And if that wasn't enough: https://www.itpro.com/business/business-strategy/mark-zucker...

A lot of companies doubled in size due to the Covid surge, for questionable strategic reasons

The goal is to always be bringing in new talent and cutting lowest performers to increase productivity. They want the new talent and don’t care about the low performers at a personal level.

Fear. Effects on stock price during when talent is a hot commodity.

Besides, all those Associate Directors of Nonengineering Engineers of Developer Conference Swag Acquisition need to eat too.

The goal is to replace that 5% with new hires, resulting in higher average performance. It has nothing to do with total hiring amount.

... and correspondingly lower salaries.

That is the definition of higher performance. Greater contribute output for less input