diff --git a/atlasdb-client/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/persister/JacksonPersister.java b/atlasdb-client/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/persister/JacksonPersister.java
index adc75007f73..f1a1118d07e 100644
--- a/atlasdb-client/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/persister/JacksonPersister.java
+++ b/atlasdb-client/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/persister/JacksonPersister.java
@@ -19,10 +19,7 @@
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
 import com.google.common.base.Throwables;
 import com.palantir.atlasdb.persist.api.ReusablePersister;
-import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
-import java.io.StringReader;
-import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 
 /**
  * A {@link ReusablePersister} that uses an {@link ObjectMapper} to serialize and deserialize objects
@@ -41,14 +38,7 @@ public JacksonPersister(Class<T> typeRef, ObjectMapper mapper) {
     @Override
     public final T hydrateFromBytes(byte[] input) {
         try {
-            if (input.length <= 8192 && mapper.getFactory().canUseCharArrays()) {
-                // Optimize to avoid allocation of heap ByteBuffer via InputStreamReader.
-                // Remove after upgrade to Jackson 2.16.
-                // see: https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-core/pull/1081
-                // and https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-benchmarks/pull/9
-                return mapper.readValue(new StringReader(new String(input, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)), typeRef);
-            }
-            return mapper.readValue(new ByteArrayInputStream(input), typeRef);
+            return mapper.readValue(input, typeRef);
         } catch (IOException e) {
             throw Throwables.propagate(e);
         }
diff --git a/atlasdb-impl-shared/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/internalschema/persistence/InternalSchemaMetadataPayloadCodec.java b/atlasdb-impl-shared/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/internalschema/persistence/InternalSchemaMetadataPayloadCodec.java
index bf4633f121c..de0345303d3 100644
--- a/atlasdb-impl-shared/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/internalschema/persistence/InternalSchemaMetadataPayloadCodec.java
+++ b/atlasdb-impl-shared/src/main/java/com/palantir/atlasdb/internalschema/persistence/InternalSchemaMetadataPayloadCodec.java
@@ -25,10 +25,7 @@
 import com.palantir.conjure.java.serialization.ObjectMappers;
 import com.palantir.logsafe.SafeArg;
 import com.palantir.logsafe.exceptions.SafeIllegalStateException;
-import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
-import java.io.StringReader;
-import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.util.Optional;
 import java.util.function.Function;
 
@@ -101,15 +98,7 @@ static VersionedInternalSchemaMetadata encode(InternalSchemaMetadata internalSch
 
     private static InternalSchemaMetadata decodeViaJson(byte[] byteArray) {
         try {
-            if (byteArray.length <= 8192) {
-                // Optimize to avoid allocation of heap ByteBuffer via InputStreamReader.
-                // Remove after upgrade to Jackson 2.16.
-                // see: https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-core/pull/1081
-                // and https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-benchmarks/pull/9
-                return SCHEMA_METADATA_READER.readValue(
-                        new StringReader(new String(byteArray, StandardCharsets.UTF_8)));
-            }
-            return SCHEMA_METADATA_READER.readValue(new ByteArrayInputStream(byteArray));
+            return SCHEMA_METADATA_READER.readValue(byteArray);
         } catch (IOException e) {
             throw new RuntimeException(e);
         }
diff --git a/changelog/@unreleased/pr-7168.v2.yml b/changelog/@unreleased/pr-7168.v2.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..8f8a708a44f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/@unreleased/pr-7168.v2.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+type: improvement
+improvement:
+  description: |-
+    Now that AtlasDB has upgraded to Jackson 2.16.1, remove performance workaround that landed upstream in Jackson 2.16.0. See https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-core/pull/1081
+
+    Removes changes from https://github.com/palantir/atlasdb/pull/6750
+  links:
+  - https://github.com/palantir/atlasdb/pull/7168