Should I postpone travel?

There are no guarantees. If your manager is going to put you in the Needs Support bucket artificially to fire you based on new edicts, this trip is unlikely to be the make or break.

If you are going to keep working, attend meetings when possible, etc. and your performance really won’t change, I am not sure what the problem would be unless the witch hunt is already on. If the witch hunt is on, you being more visible for one month doesn’t seem likely to save you if you received the mark.

Performance eval is for a year. This is one month. I can’t say there won’t be recency bias going into PSC, but it should not. But the company should not be needing to cull 12-15% of people by moving the goal posts in the 11th (ok, 10th) hour, either and here we are.

Weigh the four scenarios:

• You go, your rating is fine. No regrets, no worries.

• You go, you get NS. You blame the trip and regret it, but you don’t actually know if that’s involved at all and did have the experience, family time, whatever.

• You don’t go, your rating is fine. You regret not going and wonder if you still would have been OK if you had.

• You don’t go, you get NS. Now you really regret not going because it didn’t matter that you stayed.

Based on the possibilities, I personally would go. I will admit a bias against Meta, especially now, but if having a life costs you your job, I don’t know if it’s a job you want. What do you cut out next year?

I really like Lee's way of approaching this. One more input into this: what have your past ratings been, and what feedback have you gotten from your manager about your performance?

If your past ratings have been good, and your manager has not given you an indication of a poor rating, the risk of things blowing up because you're working remotely is low. If Meta does decide to do layoffs, it'll be due to past low performance, not because you were remote for a month.

The time zone does make it difficult, but perhaps you can dial into important meetings so it doesn't feel like you're "working" but still absent.

I would recommend focusing on being available and productive. This might mean that you need to work at night in your new location, but that's what I was usually doing. Otherwise, it's usually better to take a few days off instead.

And I think being available and productive for your team is more important than your location, but please check this out with your manager to be 100% sure ;)