New York: A Facebook communications manager on maternity leave was among the 11,000 Meta employees impacted by mass layoffs at the tech giant. Anneka Patel had woken up to nurse her daughter when she received an email informing her that she had been included in the layoffs.
She said she’d woken up at 3 am to feed her three-month-old daughter, “At 5:35 am I got the email that I had been included in the layoffs. My heart sank,” the Indian-origin woman, Anneka Patel, said in a LinkedIn post.
She said she’d heard that the company could be making significant cuts, thus had been checking her email.
“So, what’s next? That’s a tough one to answer. My maternity leave is due to end in February and while these first few months of motherhood have been some of the most challenging of my life, I wouldn’t have traded them for the world,” Ms Patel added.
The recent mass firing from Meta Platforms triggered a barrage of reactions from across the spectrum. While some criticised the manner of execution, some raised ethical concerns. In all the pandemonium, countless human stories of recounting the shock, tribulations and fear owing to uncertainty have come to the fore.
Anneka Patel got the job in May 2020 as Meta hired aggressively throughout the Covid pandemic, assessing that the sudden online traffic uptick was a permanent change in people’s behaviour. The staff headcount doubled to nearly 90,000 in two years.
Ms Patel said she’d shifted from home base London to the US with the desire to some day work for Meta. She posted, “I’m going to continue to dedicate my time to my daughter over the next few months, and will be open to work in the New Year.”
Another such employee, Himanshu V, said he’d just moved to Canada from India for a new Meta job. In a LinkedIn post, he wrote, “I relocated to Canada to join Meta and two days after joining, my journey came to an end as I am impacted by the massive layoff. My heart goes out to everyone facing a difficult situation right now.”
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