Employee fired at Meta during maternity leave

After laying off 11,000 workers last year, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is now cutting another 10,000 jobs. Many employees affected by the company’s second round of layoffs are now taking to LinkedIn to share their stories. One of those Meta employees has revealed that her maternity leave was cut short due to the layoffs, after having worked at the company for three years.

Sara Schneider, who was part of the talent acquisition and recruiting team, shared how she experienced major life milestones during her time with 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 at Meta was cut short due to the relentless Meta layoffs. I spent three amazing 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 people for both the People Team and the Software Engineering Team.”

Ms. Schneider’s post also revealed that she had “suffered a near-fatal postpartum hemorrhage 8 hours postpartum.”

“During my birthing process, I had a near-fatal postpartum hemorrhage 8 hours after delivery. I lost over 5 liters of blood with massive blood clots and blood pressure in my 50’s. Though incredibly traumatic, I know I was kept alive for a reason. It gives me perspective that I have purpose, and life’s ups and downs are just that – temporary. I promised myself that if I made it out alive I wouldn’t sweat life so much and would be thankful for everything around me,” she continued.

Prior to this, another Meta employee was also fired while on 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 asked, “Did Mark Zuckerberg take a pay cut?” and stated that her recruiting team was “first class” while saying that Meta’s “handling of the situation is appalling”.

In addition to the layoffs, Meta Platforms Inc. also plans to close about 5,000 positions, cut 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 fewer than 10 direct reports to “flatten” the organization. He added: “We don’t expect the workforce to grow that fast, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defrag as many layers as possible”.

According to Mr. Zuckerberg, 2023 is Meta’s “year of efficiency,” which the company communicated to its employees during performance reviews.