CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an employee memo last month (as reported by Bloomberg) that he planned to cut around 3,600 positions—or about 5% of the workforce in said performance-based layoffs. But many of the employees affected by the move are speaking out on social media, stating that they have no prior history of not meeting company expectations.

“The hardest part is Meta publicly stating they’re cutting low performers, so it feels like we have the scarlet letter on our backs,” one anonymous employee told Business Insider. “People need to know we’re not underperformers.” Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tech sector reacts to Meta layoffs

Over on Blind, an anonymous app for verified employees often used in the tech space, employees are noting that an unseasonable chill has come over Silicon Valley. Besides allegations of the company misusing the low-performer label, some also claimed that Meta laid them off while they were taking approved leave.

“[I] consistently exceeded expectations multiple years, had a baby in 2024, got laid off,” wrote one former Meta employee. They were responding to a fellow employee’s comment about “dozens of people with pristine history and exceeds rating that took parental or medical leave and got laid off.”

Another employee who says they were on maternity leave for six months added they had “no history of below average performance,” and are seeking legal advice. Another Meta castoff called the layoffs cruel, adding that some people were pushed to “lowest” ratings while on medical leave. 

“Seems it was more about money than performance,” said the Meta employee, adding that people with almost a decade of experience at Meta were axed. “Be careful about joining this company. Zuck doesn’t care about his employees. Only the company,” they wrote.

“Meta is now the cruelest tech company out there,” wrote a Meta worker. Another Amazon employee wrote that they believed Meta really is only now for young workers without a family that “don’t have anything else to focus on rather than making money.” 

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Culture shift in Silicon Valley

The tech world has been going through a pendulum swing for some time now, and it’s hitting workers on their backs. Employees have been subjected to waning job stability in the form of layoffs, decreased flexibility with RTO mandates, and a change in culture as CEOs cut DEI initiatives while publicly backing President Trump. 

Culture at Meta, once supposedly synonymous with Sheryl Sandberg and her “lean in” feminism standing at the helm, turned a page as Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy.”

A Microsoft employee wrote on Blind that a friend from Meta was told to “find someone” to let go even though everyone was performing at or above expectations. “All of these layoffs this year are payback for 2021–2022,” they wrote. “Execs were terrified of the power workers had [at] that time and saw the offers and pay at that time [are] unsustainable. Best way to stop that is put the fear of god back in the workers..”

“It’s so sad. Don’t even know who to trust at this point,” wrote one Meta employee. Another commented that they knew someone with five years of exceeding expectations who was fired, claiming that “managers abused the system to fire people they simply do not like.”