Meta recently started making employee reductions, as part of its second round of employment cuts, which will affect 10,000 employees. The first wave of layoffs came in November which removed 11,000 positions.
Starting in April, the company will lay off 10,000 workers over the course of the following year. The effects are being felt by tech teams, machine learning engineers, and designers.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, also acknowledged that the social media firm “overhired” workers during the pandemic and is now struggling to survive in a challenging economic environment.
In the meantime, a former Meta employee had claimed that she had received $200,000 (about Rs. 1.6 million) for doing virtually nothing because the company was understaffed.
Chell Sterioff, a US-based employee of Meta since May 2021, is one of the numerous workers who have spoken out about their layoff experiences. But like thousands of other workers, her position was unexpectedly terminated.
On Ex meta, employees disclosed being laid off
Chell Sterioff got a life-altering email from her workplace, Meta, in the early morning alerting her that her last day at work would be that day. Sterioff spent more than a decade working with Microsoft before joining Meta.
According to Sterioff, who shared her story on LinkedIn, “After working at Meta for over 2 years, I received a notification at 4:06 am that my role had been affected by #metalayoffs and that it would be my last day. As a result, I am now #opentowork.”
Sterioff noted that she was grateful to Meta for the opportunity she had. “I am thankful for the opportunity to experience Meta. I learned a ton during my time there. After 1.5 decades at Microsoft, it was a big cultural and engineering shift for me and I can truly say those I worked with lived the company values – be bold, be open, build awesome stuff, and more. To my FPM Metamates and fellow FB TPMs, I will miss working with you all. I hope our path cross again soon in this big-little tech world and, until then, I hope you each enjoy your adventure.”
When Meta announced its first wave of layoffs around five months ago, Sterioff stated in linkedin about how she awoke at 12:51 am “in anticipation” of a potential layoff.
At the time, her message stated, “My day today started at 12:51 AM PST. I woke up (unintentionally) in anticipation of a possible layoff announcement at #Meta – which would be the latest across the industry this week. This morning Meta employees across the US woke up to an email that 13 percent of the company would be laid off.”
Talking about how hard it was to see coworkers and friends lose their jobs, she added, “Today was a tough day due to #MetaLayoffs – one in a string of hard days across the industry as we face significant change and many layoffs in the tech world. Even though I and my direct team at Meta were not personally impacted by the layoffs – and despite having experienced layoffs before – it is never easy to see thousands of amazing co-workers and many-a friends laid off”. It has absolutely had an impact.
“So… while I’ll get back to working on my craft as a program manager & bringing my best self as a Meta employee and leader soon enough, I do want to pause and take just one breath – or okay, maybe two.” As Meta continues to cut off more employees, the focus has shifted to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s travel costs.
According to a recent article from Business Insider, Meta revealed in a proxy statement submitted earlier this week that it spent more than it had in years prior to the Covid-19 outbreak on Mark Zuckerberg’s private jet travel in 2022, at about USD 2.3 million.
The report also revealed that Meta spent more than USD 27.1 million on the CEO’s ‘all other compensations’ in 2022.
According to allegations that surfaced in February of this year, Mark Zuckerberg’s security budget had been raised to USD 14 million. This meant that the corporation would now provide an additional USD 4 million (about Rs 33 crore) towards Zuckerberg’s security, which was previously covered by a USD 10 million security budget.
