[quasse]

Based on input from my friends at Meta, this is a direct side effect of the way individual performance is quantified.

Each person is required to "excel" along four axes, the two relevant ones for this story are likely "engineering excellence" and "impact"

* "Impact" means you made KPIs go up. Specifically KPIs relating to getting user eyeballs onto content / ads. Reducing costs, designing good systems, reducing developer friction all do not count towards your impact. * "Engineering excellence" is where every other aspect of being a good developer is lumped in. Saved the org $10mm? Sorry, no impact for you, just a point in engineering excellence.

Unfortunately, as you can probably guess "impact" is the weighted the highest when determining the value of an employee. I would guess Eric and his team fell afoul of this aspect of the internal political game at Meta.