META employees have blamed artificial intelligence for taking their jobs after 3,600 workers were recently fired in a shocking cut.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to cut workers he framed as underachieving from the company, but ex-staffers are now firing back at the tech boss.
Zuckerberg announced his plans to cut 5% of his workforce in an internal memo in mid-January.
He said the company “decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster.”
Ex-employees are now calling out the claim as a blatant lie and accusing the tech giant of sneakily shifting to prioritizing AI.
A former product designer at Meta, Steven S., criticized Zuckerberg’s assertion regarding performance management as “misleading” in a LinkedIn post discussing his own termination from the company.
“I was let go today – but not because I was a ‘Low Performer,'” he wrote.
“This morning, I found out I was part of Meta’s latest round of layoffs – one of the 5% of employees impacted across the company.
He highlighted the leadership’s narrative of the situation as an effort to ‘raise the bar’ by eliminating individuals labeled as ‘underperformers.’
“Let’s be clear: that label is misleading, and for many of us, it’s flat-out wrong.”
Steven said the layoffs had nothing to do with performance because he worked hard and contributed to his team the best he could.
Another former employee echoed Steven’s experience and said Zuckerberg blamed the cuts on performance for the sake of a “corporate facade.”
“This wasn’t about performance,” former Meta content manager Kaila Curry wrote on LinkedIn.
“It was about workforce reduction in favor of AI initiatives.”
“Maybe I ‘lacked masculine energy’ (to quote Mark Zuckerberg himself). Who knows?”
Curry said she received favorable results in all reviews and was “always told I was doing a good job.”
Who is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook?
Here’s what you need to know…
- Mark Zuckerberg is the chairman, CEO and co-founder of social networking giant Facebook
- Born in White Plains, New York in 1984, Zuckerberg already had a “reputation as a programming prodigy” when he started college
- While at Harvard, Zuckerberg launched a site called Face Mash, on which students ranked the attractiveness of their classmates
- Harvard shut the site down after its popularity crashed a network and Zuckerberg later apologised saying it was “completely improper”
- The following term he began working on an early version of Facebook
- The 33-year-old launched the social network from his dorm room on February 4, 2004 with the help of fellow students
- The friends would end up embroiled in legal disputes as they challenged Zuckerberg for shares in the company
- Zuckerberg also faced action from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, as well as Divya Narendra who claimed he had stolen their idea – the disagreement was later turned into the film, The Social Network
- The tech prodigy dropped out of Harvard to focus on Facebook, but received an honorary degree in 2017
- Speaking about the site to Wired magazine in 2010 he said: “The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open”
- By 2012 Facebook had one billion users. By June 2017 it had reached two billion users every month
- In 2024, Facebook reaches 3.05 billion monthly users
- Mark Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth is $165 billion, which makes him the fourth-richest person in the world
- Zuckerberg is married to fellow Harvard alumni Priscilla Chan, who he began dating in 2003
- The couple have three daughters, as well as a Puli dog named Beast
Reflecting on his experience, the ex-employee stated, “I was never subjected to a performance improvement plan, didn’t receive constructive criticism, and lacked adequate mentoring or clear guidance.”
“I simply put in the work – often on weekends – while being isolated in an empty office.”
The Meta layoffs started on Monday.
Zuckerberg said the cuts come as Meta is focusing on developing AI, its smart glasses, and “the future of social media.”
“This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams,” he warned in the internal memo.
Meta hasn’t returned The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.
