Thursday 10 November 2022 02:20 AM Former Meta employees slam Mark Zuckerberg for his 'classy' decision to lay off ... trends now

Former Meta employees have slammed Mark Zuckerberg after the billionaire CEO laid off more than 11,000 employees via email.

Staffers received confirmation about the cuts in a company-wide email sent around 6am EST, in which Zuckerberg admitted he 'got it wrong' and 'takes responsibility' for the problems which forced him to cull 13 percent of Meta's workforce.

Zuckerberg follows in the footsteps of new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who abruptly told half of the social media giant's workforce last week that they were let go in an email to their personal accounts — and locked them out of their business accounts.

'It's like they don't know what they're doing,' one former Meta employee told DailyMail.com on the condition of anonymity.

He told DailyMail.com how he has been working as a staff software engineer at the company for years, eventually becoming a team leader.

In general, he said, working for the company was a positive experience.

'Teammates and lower level management are great and supportive, but higher leadership is terrible,' the former staffer said, detailing how they focus on a new priority each year and just recently reorganized the staff before announcing the layoffs. 'I think they just don't have a good plan,' he said. 

The engineer also told DailyMail.com how devastated he was when he received the email saying he was laid off on Wednesday morning, saying the decision was made by executives at the company and not the managers who actually oversee their staff.

'My wife and I read in the leaks that at 3am we'd receive a memo from Mark Z,' he said. 

'So we just woke at that time and discovered that I didn't have access to the internal network. That's how we learned that I got fired. At 5am I received the official letter.

'It was sad, but not that much,' he admitted. 'They are giving us an amazing severance package, like seven months of severance with insurance and everything.

'My wife was feeling worse that [I was] because we just had a baby two months ago, and I'm the one providing income to the family, but I think we'll get through this.'

He noted he does not have a grudge against the company, but said: 'I just wish leadership didn't have to fire people through email. That's so inhumane.

'Something I loved about Facebook was the personal treatment of every person,' he added. 'It seems they are losing that.'

The father's remarks echo some of those made by other former employees, who lamented the abrupt layoffs online.

'It just feels like I'm in an episode of Severance,' lamented Eric Triebe, a former software engineer at the company.

'Despite knowing layoffs were coming, waking up to your work phone not working and saying your account has been deactivated is beyond a shock,' he posted on LinkedIn as he made recruiters aware he is now looking for another job.

'No meeting with HR. No good byes to co-workers. Seemingly no contact was made or discussion from leadership with my manager ... in terms of justification.

'Just a cold, impersonal email and then the plug is pulled before you wake up. '

Carlos Griffoni, who worked as a product manager, also tweeted that he, too, woke up Wednesday morning to find out he had been laid off.

'No warning,' he said, adding that he was 'told recently by a lead, the team I worked on was high-priority and wouldn't be affected.

'Companywide layoffs via email. Classy,' he continued, noting to his more than 2,000 followers that at least he now has more time to work on his graphic novel.

Nathan Magner, a technical recruiter for design talent, also decried how the company broke the news.

'#Layoffs suck,' he wrote on LinkedIn. 'Finding out you got laid off via email sucks.

And Brianna Sgro, another ousted recruiter, said she was 'hurt' by the company's decision, but would miss working at Meta.

'I'm sad, hurt, uncertain, disappointed and now jobless,' she said, noting that she had long dreamed of working for Facebook.

'When I joined a year ago I had full faith and excitement to work at a company I dreamed of working at my whole life,' she said. 'I used to think about on my commute to work 'Wow, what if I ever got the chance to work at Facebook or Google!' It felt like a dream that was unreachable.

'Although all of these things come to an end today, I am so thankful to experience them.'

Others, meanwhile, told how the layoffs will affect their personal lives, with Madison Strickland, a recruiter for Meta's machine learning team, revealing she was set to take her maternity leave in just two weeks.

'Unfortunately, I am part of the 11,000 employees at Meta that were laid off this morning,' she wrote on LinkedIn. 'I never thought I'd find myself in this position,

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