Meta & Google Are Laying Off Employees So Politely, You May Not Even Feel like Getting Fired

You may have heard of the term ‘quiet quitting’ but here’s something new. Meta and Google have mastered the technique of quiet layoffs. They do so by instructing personnel to choose new positions following team reorganisations or dissolutions. Then, they extend the deadline for reapplying until certain employees are left without a position.

quiet quitting? sure.

say hello to quiet layoffs https://t.co/B1dBmpniU7

— Venkat Ananth (@venkatananth) September 22, 2022

These quiet layoffs may be small-scale but make no mistake, people are getting fired nonetheless. The real benefit remains in the fact that such incidents don’t make the headlines too quickly. 

Other companies like IBM and Oracle have practiced something similar in the past. They got rid of employees in small batches over a significant period of time, just to be able to execute a big layoff plan without making a lot of noise.

Meta Revenues Are Struggling In 2022

Meta, the Facebook parent company, admitted to spending $10 billion on the metaverse. Furthermore, with Apple allowing iOS users to opt out of online tracking, Meta’s revenue generation through ad sales has also taken a significant hit. To make matters worse, a huge chunk of Facebook’s daily user base has decided to move on to other applications, leaving the massive tech space unpopulated.

In response, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urged his massive corporation to get in shape, turn up the heat, and shed the excess weight, which resulted in actions like the RIT's dissolution earlier this month.

EXCLUSIVE Meta CEO Zuckerberg: engineering hiring target for 2022 reduced to around 6,000-7,000 -employee Q&A https://t.co/fW9WkCMYTP pic.twitter.com/ajTbp0A67G

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 1, 2022

Earlier this year, an internal memo written by Meta Chief Product Manager also got leaked. The memo essentially revealed that the company is slowing down hiring and taking action to right the ship amid stormy seas and moving towards having ‘leaner teams’.

How Is Meta Indulging In Quiet Layoffs?

A worker has 30 days to locate a new position with the company. If they are unable to do so, they will lose their job. It is considered that employees are normally competent enough to find a new role with another team somewhere because of Meta’s historical record of high hiring standards.

However, according to a Wall Street Journal report, it used to be common for people to settle into new jobs quickly, previously. However, lately, even good employees with solid performance ratings have been routinely let go.

Why Is Google Struggling To Keep Their Employees?

This month, Google gave about half of the 100+ employees in its Area 120 startup a head start of 90 days to find new jobs. Additionally, there was internal pressure in March to allow 180 rather than 60 days to locate replacement teams for the more than 100 Google Cloud employees getting the axe. It is anticipated that Googlers would join other teams, similar to how Meta did.

A Google spokeswoman told the WSJ that over 95% of employees who expressed a desire to continue in their current positions did so in a timely manner. Another way of looking at the matter is to say that 5% of the employees ended up losing their jobs. 

According to the WSJ article, Meta had 83,553 employees at the end of Q2 2022, which is a 32% increase over the same period in 2021. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, counted 174,014 people in Q2, up 20.8 per cent from the same time in 2021. Now it seems that neither business is able to effectively manage or utilise those new employees.