Meta Layoff Week Reflections

What a week.

Meta performed its first layoff in the company's 18 year existence. 11,000 employees were notified early Wednesday morning that their roles were being eliminated, 13% of all full time employees.

Here is how things went down. These are my personal recollection of events and any opinions or thoughts/feelings expressed are my own.

Rough Timeline:

• September 30th Quarterly Earnings

• November 1st Meta eliminates company travel

• Sunday November 6th WSJ leaks news of upcoming “Large Scale Layoffs”

• Tuesday November 8th WSJ leaks that Meta employees will get an email at 3am Wednesday with details

• Wednesday 3am Mark emails all employees (and Meta newsroom) on layoffs 

• Wednesday 4am Managers receive email about whether team members were impacted

• Wednesday 5:58am all employees receive email about whether they were impacted

Starting the week of September 30th the company announced an end of all business travel and to cancel any already booked travel for the following week. In retrospect it seems more clear that this was a move to ensure employees were not in the middle of travel while let go but at the time it just seemed like typical cost reduction measures. It appeared that most companies who performed layoffs were doing so ahead of quarterly earnings announcements. I personally thought we might be in the clear since we just passed earnings on September 30th. 

That all changed on Sunday when the WSJ released an article “Facebook Parent Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week”.

Now this isn’t the first time that the WSJ announced Meta layoffs, back in September they stated that Meta would perform staff reductions in an effort to reduce costs by 10%.

This time was different though, the company reply was less of a rebuff than usual and more of a (paraphrasing) “we already said in previous statements that some teams would get smaller and we would be cutting costs, why is this news” reply. Which of course caused extreme uncertainty to strike across all employees. As evident by my angsty and passive aggressive LinkedIn post from Monday:

Then on Tuesday the WSJ again released notes from a leadership meeting where Mark shared that on Wednesday thousands of employees would be let go. Down to the specific details that we would all receive emails at 3AM PST with details. All this time meetings were being held as usual with the backdrop of extreme uncertainty of what would happen the next day.

I dealt with the uncertainty in the best way I knew how. I made sure all my work related expenses were submitted into concur, every mile driven to off-sites accounted for (gotta get that 62.5 cents per mile traveled), and past months of internet receipts filed. I also went through my budget and verified that I had a very liquid 6 months of expenses if the worst were to happen.

I was mentally prepared for all outcomes. Having that emergency fund gave me the confidence to know that financially I would be ok. More than ok in fact. Since we are a dual income household, nearly all expenses would still be covered if only one of us were to lose our jobs. I also remained confident that Meta would provide a severance beyond what would legally be required.

Tuesday night rolls around. I anticipated a rather sleepless night filled with anxiety for the next day. Because of the WSJ article I knew the email would land at 3am and that if I checked my phone I would never get back to sleep. I woke up nearly every hour but fought the urge to look at my phone. Finally at 6:30 I look.

Email: 5:58am 

Subject Line : Your Role is Not Affected by Meta’s Layoff

Boom. Some level of relief. Then I see the next two emails that arrived earlier. For those who woke up at 3am to see the initial email they would have 3 more hours before they would finally find out whether their role was impacted or not.

Now I was fully awake. I got up to my laptop to try and figure out what the impact was to my team. My immediate team was impacted. Workchat, our internal messaging system built into Workplace, was starting to fill with alerts. A frantic series of “check-ins” from across the company and teams I worked with. Everyone was trying to understand what just happened and who was impacted.

The cuts were across every function and every level of seniority. 11,000 coworkers. My role at Meta was not impacted by the layoffs but seeing 11,000 co-workers laid off absolutely has an impact.

As I expected, Meta provided a generous severance package to those let go. 16 weeks base pay + 2 weeks for every year of service. All PTO paid out (legally required in California). The next RSU vest scheduled for later this month will still be given. Six months of fully covered healthcare for their full families. In addition to career services they are also providing immigration support to help those on work visas navigate the implications on their immigration status.

I know the majority would gladly give back everyone above to remain employed. But I appreciate the company for continuing to take care of their employees even in situations like this.

What a week. I ended up taking Friday off and going to the Exploratorium with my 4 year old. Nothing like the madness of childhood to help take your mind off work.

I am glad it is over. I am not ready to pull the plug and severance-FIRE just yet.

Reflections on the week.

The most frustrating thing of the past week for me was the overwhelming amount of uncertainty and lack of communication from Meta corporate. I was finding out everything from people outside of Meta who would send me Wall Street Journal articles with more current information than anything shared internally. I understand the incredible amount of logistics that must be required to coordinate a global layoff of 11,000 employees. There has to be some balance between full radio silence and openly sharing details before they are final.

I was trying to contemplate whether it would have been better to not know anything and then get the full shock and awe of surprise layoffs Wednesday morning. After talking to peers who had gone through that scenario at AirBnB and Uber (my own household) that strategy clearly had its own set of extreme drawbacks.

At the end of the day there is unlikely a great way to do this and unfortunately there have been countless examples of companies who managed this much more poorly.

Future 

Mark has been very clear in both internal and external communications that layoffs are just one piece of the cost cutting measures.

“Overall, this will add up to a meaningful cultural shift in how we operate. For example, as we shrink our real estate footprint, we’re transitioning to desk sharing for people who already spend most of their time outside the office. We’ll roll out more cost-cutting changes like this in the coming months.” - Mark, Meta Newsroom

Meta is serious about cutting down on costs and the layoffs are part of a broader cost reduction strategy. We are seeing large changes like cutting down the real estate footprint, eliminating projects like portal,  and we are seeing smaller changes like reducing our Fitness/Wellness/Childcare reimbursement down from $3,000 -> $2,000. That $1,000 change will have such a minuscule impact on the overall costs but it sends a clear message that every expense and set of perks will be on the chopping block. 

Resources For Those Laid Off

Please email me if there is anything I can do to help those impacted. Happy to schedule time to help talk through budgets, spending, or help trying to understand severance payments and how to stretch each dollar.

Other resources that have been shared with me:

• Google Sheet of Hiring Companies 

• If you were laid off from Meta today, and want to be contacted by companies interested in hiring you: https://lnkd.in/gPZmgVGj

• If you are interested in hiring ex-Meta employees: https://lnkd.in/g8pTqjW4

Other Events This Week

Beyond my Meta bubble it has been a wild week. I don’t even know where to begin.

Elon laying off half off twitter, surprise signal of slowing inflation, the best weekly stock market rally in 2 years, crypto markets imploding with soap opera like drama at FTX, oh and there was also a US election giving democrats continued control over the Senate.