“I thought I’d be clear on this layoff”

At the beginning of this week, the art recruiter at Meta (dead) I thought layoffs wouldn’t touch her, she told Yahoo Finance. She has done well on the job, always meeting or exceeding expectations at a company that has prioritized attracting engineering talent for years. She was also in her third trimester.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said, “Until yesterday, I thought I’d be clear on this layoff. I didn’t think these layoffs would be as large as they are, or that I would be affected.”

But by 8:45 a.m. ET, she says, she was denied access to her computer, with only access to work email.

The recruiter said, “I tried to search for benefits. I typed it into our search bar, and it wouldn’t let me in, saying I needed internal access.”

Yahoo Finance spoke to three Meta employees who lost their jobs this week, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns that the future could affect their future prospects or benefits. They all submitted their work documents for the company.

Two common threads emerged from the three. First, they all said management has spent the past few months saying layoffs weren’t on the table. Second, they described the work environment that has changed drastically in recent days, especially after the Wall Street Journal mentioned On Monday, layoffs are imminent.

“Meta was kind of a dream company for me to work for,” the recruit said. “I really wanted to put my full trust in them, but given the scale of these layoffs and how they handled them, I don’t have a lot of faith in this company for the future.”

Meta isn’t the first tech company to lay off en masse in recent days. Twitter began laying off workers last week affecting 3,700 employees – about 50% of the company now owned by billionaire Elon Musk – and those are back on social media. However, the Meta layoffs are something new for Facebook’s parent company, as it’s the company’s first-ever major job in its nearly 19-year history. Meanwhile, Twitter has laid off workers Beforefor example in 2015, under Jack Dorsey, then CEO.

The story continues

Paranoia and anxiety

The director of product marketing, who joined the company less than a year ago, said working at Meta is usually “confusing and complicated,” but something has changed in recent days. He told Yahoo Finance that he and his co-workers were deeply nervous.

“The past two days have been paranoia and anxiety for everyone who works for the company,” he said on Wednesday. “We all thought, OK, some of us wouldn’t be here by Thursday, so the work has stopped – no work going on at Meta this week at all.”

The layoffs have hit hiring particularly hard, but the cuts have come in divisions across the company — including in the company’s metaverse operation, Reality Labs, all three confirmed.

Before the layoffs, employees were told not to come to the office, and layoff emails came in waves, employees told Yahoo Finance. The first round came around 6 a.m. ET, and another wave came at 9 a.m. ET. A Reality Labs employee received the email at 9 a.m., just as she began to breathe a sigh of relief, she said.

“At Reality Labs, we still thought this was a top priority, and then two weeks ago there was a sudden stop,” she added. “We were running off speculation that we’re ‘realistic labs, we’ll be fine.’ Until that morning, while I was talking to people, I thought I’d be fine.”

Reality Labs has become somewhat infamous, losing billions as the company turns to the metaverse. In an internal email, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took responsibility for the layoffs, saying he had grossly misjudged the business climate.

“Not only has online commerce reverted to previous trends, but the overall economic downturn, increased competition, and loss of advertising signal caused our revenue to be much lower than I had anticipated,” he told employees by email. “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Employees Yahoo Finance spoke to were split about how satisfied they were with the benefits they were receiving, which include remaining paid vacation pay, 16 weeks of severance compensation, job support and immigration, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Finance. The pregnant art recruiter said Meta didn’t provide enough clarity about the benefits, particularly in terms of healthcare, while the other two said they were pleased with their package.

Even with generous termination benefits, mass layoffs can carry legal risks and, if not planned, can lead to litigation.

“When companies do things like this in a hurry, they can make mistakes that lead to problems,” said Melissa Atkins, Obermayer business and recruitment partner. “Although something may be neutral on its face, it may be discriminatory in its effect.”

Twitter has already been hit with a proposed collective strike, which claims the company failed to give employees sufficient notice of mass layoffs under the Retraining Notification and Amendment Act (WARN).

Atkins expects to see more layoffs in the coming months, and we likely haven’t seen the latest cuts at Big Tech or the Meta.

“I think if my job survived, I’d be really nervous right now,” said a Meta employee.

Meta shares are up 10% on the day as of the market close on Thursday, but are down about 66% year-to-date.

Allie Garfinkle is a senior technical reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at Tweet embed.

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