As Meta laid off 8,000 employees this week, a fired staffer claims the company has earned several infamous nicknames in China due to its “toxic” work culture. In a lengthy post that has amassed over 390,000 views on X (and counting), Jeremy Bernier noted that the ongoing layoffs, missed bets on newer technologies, and unstable management have led to a sentiment of major ridicule towards Meta in the international tech circles.
In a lengthy post that has amassed over 390,000 views on X, Jeremy Bernier noted that “Squid Game” and “Hunger Games” are among the popular nicknames Meta has earned in China. These are the names of TV franchises that glorify brutal, survival-of-the-fittest competitions, which as per Bernier, mirrors Meta’s own cutthroat corporate culture and relentless layoffs.
“I think they’re all accurate,” said Bernier who served as a senior software engineer at Meta from 2024 to 2026. “The company culture is basically every man/woman for themselves. The performance review process (PSC) not only doesn’t incentivize helping others, if anything it actually discourages it since everyone is stack ranked against each other.”
Meta’s rating on professional platforms like Blind and Glassdoor have fallen to a three-star ratings. Multiple anonymously posted reviews on the platform have said that the Menlo Park, California-based company is a “very stressful place to work.”
Bernier echoed a similar opinion, in sharper words. He claimed that the level of competition within the company, psychologically encourages the staff members to throw each other under the bus to save themselves.
“I had the most toxic manager of my life here. I watched him deliberately set up a new hire to fail, driving them to needing to see a psychiatrist for anxiety + depression, and getting them fired. Then he suddenly disappeared for eight months, before leaving the company,” the engineer’s account recalling his experience in Meta added.
From ethnic concentrations within internal teams to the top management having tapped out of genuine care for the employees, the laid-off employee has made several shocking claims against Meta one day after being locked out of his work ID and work laptop basis an email of termination sent over in the wee hours of May 20.
“In the end, it doesn’t even matter”: The “I am good” sentiment
The post from Bernier has met with mixed reactions. While some are calling his write-up a “public revenge memoir”, the others are recalling similar feedback on Meta’s work culture under his post.
In the midst of all this noise, Bernier has maintained that he feels good to have gotten this out of the corporate rat race at the social networking giant.
“Obviously it sucks to lose the income. But between the never-ending layoffs, stack ranking, etc., I’m good. Pretty convinced that when I look back at this moment a few years into the future, I’ll be grateful it happened,” Bernier had said in a previous post, quoting the reflecting on the lyrics of the famous Linkin Park track – “In the end, it doesn’t even matter”.
The testimonies against Meta flooding the social media as of Thursday are endless. These are some that The Coin Headlines came across on X.
Meta’s layoffs come amid industry-wide economic shifts gaining momentum from the rapid developments in AI. More AI adoption brings more automation to workflows, amplifies outputs in smaller time durations, and leaves little room for error among other benefits. Kraken, Coinbase, Intuit, Cloudfare are among other tech firms that have announced mass lay-offs to divert more funds towards AI products and adoption because, afterall, robots do not take severences and salaries.
As of now, Meta has not reacted to the public backlash. Probably, Mark Zuckerberg — who wants an AI co-CEO to head the company with him — saw it coming.