''Top Performers Were Let Go'': Meta Employee Laid Off On Maternity Leave

After laying off 11,000 employees last year, Facebook's parent company Meta is now cutting 10,000 more jobs. Many employees who have been impacted by the second round of layoffs in the company are now taking to LinkedIn to share their stories. One such Meta employee has revealed that her maternity leave was cut short due to the layoffs, after spending three years at the company. 

Sara Schneider, who was part of the Talent Acquisition and recruiting team, said how she went through major life milestones during her time at the company, including moving three times, finding the love of her life, getting married, getting pregnant, and having her first baby. 

In a LinkedIn post, she wrote, ''Unfortunately, my maternity leave was cut short at Meta due to the brutal Meta Layoffs. I spent an amazing 3 years at a company that had so many memories and worked with the best teams and incredible people. This layoff was not performance-based as so many top performers were let go. I am honored to have spent time recruiting for the People Team as well as the Software Engineering Team.''

Ms. Schneider's post also revealed that she had '''suffered from an almost fatal post-partum hemorrhage 8 hours after giving birth.''

''During my birth process, I suffered from an almost fatal post-partum hemorrhage 8 hours after giving birth. I lost over 5 Liters of blood with massive blood clots and blood pressure in the 50's. Although incredibly traumatic, I know I was kept alive for a reason. It gives me perspective that I have a purpose, and the hills and valleys of life are just that – temporary. I made a promise to myself that if I made it out alive, I wouldn't sweat life so much and be grateful for everything around me,'' she further wrote.

Prior to this, another Meta employee was also sacked during her maternity leave. In a LinkedIn post, Andi Allen, who worked as a Senior Technical Recruiter at Meta, wrote, “I was part of today's Meta layoffs while on maternity leave”. She also sked, “Has Mark Zuckerberg taken a pay cut?” and stated that her recruitment team was “top-notch” while saying that Meta's “handling of the situation is appalling”.

Besides the layoffs, Meta Platforms Inc. is also planning to close roughly 5,000 openings, scrap lower-priority projects, and flatten layers of middle management.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will ask managers to become individual contributors and give them less than 10 direct reports to make the organisation “flatter”. He added, “We don't expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilise each manager's capacity and defragment layers as much as possible”. 

According to Mr  Zuckerberg, 2023 is Meta's “year of efficiency”, which the company has been communicating to its employees during performance reviews.