Meta has since announced the layoff of 13% of its workforce. The total number of Meta staff that are out of work is about 11,000. Mark Zuckerberg has since issued an explanation. He also claims that all employees will get adequate compensation. However, many employees took aim at the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg on an anonymous forum, Blind. There are numerous negative comments which aim at Zuckerberg and the Metaverse. They claim that the metaverse project is dragging Meta into a slow death.
On the day Meta announced the layoffs, many people commented on Blind. “The Metaverse is dragging us into a slow death. Zuckerberg can bring down a company on his own, just by using the Metaverse,”. A user who described himself as a senior software developer posted. The layoffs were likened to “The Hunger Games,”. Another user said, “Meta’s future is full of uncertainty.”
Employees can anonymously express grievances against their employers on Blind. But before joining, users must provide their work email address, job title, and employer. Thus, Blind can “assess” the authenticity of the post. Thus, when Blind lists a user as a Meta employee, it is authentic. However, sometimes the employment status of users is not officially confirmed. This means that Blind can not verify the position that these users hold. This means that it is more accurate to use Blind’s data for employee thoughts. Blind claims it occasionally sends prompts to users asking them to re-verify their accounts.
Blind’s data are from Meta employees
Rick Chen, Blind’s head of PR, explained… “Almost all of the comments on our platform are written by current employees of the various companies. This is because people often don’t have access to Blind after they’ve been fired or resigned.”
Since 2020, Meta employees have posted nearly 6,000 reviews about the company on Blind. The overall rating of the company is 4 out of 5. A self-proclaimed Meta engineer gave the company a five-star rating. He claims the company has “talented colleagues”, a “great company culture,” and a long “perks list”. But on the day of the layoffs, the engineer added that Zuckerberg was leading the company in the wrong direction.
One user who identified himself as a data scientist at Meta said Meta needed to make layoffs at the executive level, adding: “Leadership has no clue, they mistake wrong actions for progress.”
A person who says he works in talent acquisition gave Meta a four-star rating. He acknowledged that the company is “one of the best places to work,”. He adds that “Zuckerberg isn’t afraid to take risks (which is both a good and a bad thing)”.
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“Bad leadership is sinking the ship,” wrote another poster, who identified himself as a senior technical program manager. He claims that Meta has advantages such as “high salaries,” benefits, and talent, but also many “disadvantages”. The bad aspects include “no accountability at the director level and above. He also claims that the VPs and directors are just extracting the company’s profits without adding any value.
He added: “I thought it was a data-driven company. But it’s actually a company driven by personal intuition and emotion. No one can change Zuckerberg’s decision”. Another engineer gave the company just one star. He describes the mass layoffs as “the worst in history”. “With the big layoffs, I wouldn’t advise anyone to work there until the stock price fully recovers,” he adds.
However, not all Meta employees have a negative view of Zuckerberg. A former employee who was recently laid off said he found Zuckerberg’s handling of the layoffs “human”.
Incentives/compensation after layoffs
- Severance pay: Meta will pay 16 weeks (four months) of basic salary. It will also pay two additional weeks per year of service
- Paid Time Off (PTO): Meta ill reimburse all remaining paid vacation time
- Restricted Shares (RSU): Everyone affected will receive an equity award on November 15, 2022
- Health insurance: Meta will pay the medical expenses of affected employees and their families for six months
- Medical insurance: Meta will pay six months of medical expenses for affected employees and their families
- Career counselling: Meta will provide three-month career support to external suppliers. This will include early access to unpublished job leads
- Immigration support: Meta will assist if there are immigration issues
Zuckerberg claim layoffs are at least not as messy as Musk’s
After laying off over 10,000 Meta employees, Mark Zuckerberg took a swipe at Elon Musk. At a recent staff meeting, he claims that at least Meta layoff is not like Twitter. He says “at least we’re not like Egypt. Elon Musk screwed up Twitter so badly”. Zuckerberg and Musk are not friends. They are strong critics of each other. It’s never been easy for a corporate CEO to tell employees that they’ve lost their jobs. In total, Musk and Zuckerberg have laid off nearly 15,000 employees in the past week or so.
Musk laid off about 3,700 employees while Zuckerberg laid off 11,000 employees. Zuckerberg claims different companies approach layoffs differently. He claims that careful planning is important. He also adds that Musk didn’t have the time to plan as carefully as many other companies like Meta. If you don’t think hard about layoffs, chaos can happen, he claims. He also says that even after serious thoughts, Meta still has many questions to answer.
At the moment, no employee of Meta is safe. The company claims that it can’t “make any promises,”. Meta is one of several tech companies that have begun mass layoffs in recent months. Earlier this year, Snap says it would cut 20% of its staff. Ride-hailing giant, Lyft just laid off 700 employees. Fintech giant Stripe laid off 14% of its staff, or about 1,000 people.
