This week, Meta made headlines again after announcing it would be laying off 10,000 workers. These layoffs are in addition to the 11,000 employees it fired in November of last year—meaning that in four months, Meta has let go of over 20,000 workers.
These layoffs come at an interesting time for Meta, which made a $36 billion bet on the Metaverse that has so far failed to produce its desired results. The company appears to now be pivoting to developing “generative artificial intelligence.”
As more workers are laid-off from companies like Meta, many are turning to social media to tell stories from their time at the company. Now, a user on TikTok has sparked discussion after explaining what she did at Meta.
In short, it wasn’t much at all.
@maddie_macho Replying to @laurendaniellehtx those were the days man. *sigh* #meta #layoffs #google #workingintech #metalayoffs ♬ original sound – Maddie | The Career Finesser
In a video with over 122,000 views, TikTok user Maddie (@maddie_macho) writes that she got “paid $190k to do nothing at Meta.”
How did this happen? According to Maddie, she was hired to be a recruiter, but was also told that she should not hire anyone for the first 6 months to a year.
Instead of hiring, Maddie said she spent her days going through the company’s onboarding process and attending team meetings—something that confused her.
“Why are we meeting? We’re not hiring nobody!” she says in the video.
In another video, Maddie reveals that she was fired from the company after questions came up regarding her use of social media. Maddie says that this intense monitoring of social media use is one of the main reasons she disliked the job despite the low work and high pay.
“The crazy part is that they hired people to do this job, and by ‘do this job,’ I mean that they hired people to watch peoples’ social media,” she recalls in a later video. “That’s insane to me.”
“All they were doing was hoarding talent,” she says of Meta at the time. Maddie speculates that one of the reasons Meta invested so heavily into its recruiters is that it allowed them to obtain and retain top talent, even if they didn’t have a place for them in the company yet.
“They had a bunch of fake jobs so they could hoard talent and no one else could get ahead,” she concludes.
In the comment section, users revealed that Maddie’s situation is more common than most people might realize.
“Same here! I was making a lot of money at Amazon and didn’t hire anyone. Collected an $80k sign on and a volunteer severance,” recounted a user.
“Same… it was uncanny that my highest paid job let me do NOTHING all day. And I wasn’t even in recruiting,” claimed another.
“FACTS!!! I did hire 3 engineers.. But mostly played Bingo!” exclaimed a third.
That said, many were in disbelief about Maddie’s experience.
“Getting paid 190k to do nothing is wild,” shared a user.
“Yup layoffs way overdue,” stated a second.
We’ve reached out to Maddie and Meta via email.