First, sorry to those who are about to go through the layoff process. I was hit in November and wanted to post information that may (or may not) be helpful to you. Get ready for a big ass wall of text. THE NEXT 2 POINTS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT AND SHOULD BE DONE BEFORE THE LAYOFF DAY! 1. Any services you use your @fb.com/@meta.com email for, change them now! I cannot stress how painful it will become (and impossible in some cases) to change your email after the fact. Change everything. From 3rd party services you use, to things like Pivot, Optum, and your health insurance logins. Even if you don't think you're getting laid off, you should REALLY do this. 2. If you're full-time remote, use up your remote office budget (assuming that's still a thing) now! Access to Buy@ gets cut almost immediately so you won't be able to order anything the day of. For me, they actually initiated return processes for my outstanding orders, but I ended up receiving everything I ordered. You don't need to return anything and honestly, you'll find it impossible since you'll lose access to Buy@ and can't access your Amazon account any other way that I found. (Fun fact, the very last email I received to my work account before losing access was a return slip for Amazon... What a way to go out.) OK, with those taken care of, here is a little more info about what happens during the process. Things may be different for you all, they may have tightened up the process and fixed some of the frustrating parts for round 2, but this is what happened to us in Nov. This is also USA-centric/full-time employee, I expect other countries/situations to have wildly different processes. Also there are two important dates, the day you receive notice you're laid off and your separation date. The day you receive notice won't actually be your last day at Meta, it'll just be the last day you do work for Meta. You'll then be in a notice period where you continue to receive your same paycheck, benefits, bonuses, stock grants, etc. you just won't be doing work. The separation date is your actual, final, last day at Meta. To outside companies, you were a full employee until the separation date. 1. You'll receive an email saying you're impacted early in the morning. I got mine at 6am EST. Don't worry though, the email will make it clear that leadership takes full responsibility. 2. The email will contain a lot of PDF attachments with most of the information you need. Your severance agreement will not be one of them, that comes later. Equipment return documentation will not be one, that also comes later. Things that were included: immigration guidance, a notice agreement with your actual last day (note I don't know what happens in non-WARN states/countries), a sheet of all benefits contacts, a document explaining exactly how benefits will work and when you lose access, a legal document with how the severance plan works, a flier for the most useless outplacement service known to man, an overview on your mental health (Lyra) benefits, and a helpful FAQ. 3. I wouldn't be surprised if this timeline is tightened up for you all, but I was able to access most systems up until ~10am EST. I reached out to as many people as I could in WP and said goodbye. You'll notice access to random systems starts dropping periodically, then access to certain WP groups gets revoked, then it all just dies-- except for email. 4. They gave us access to email until the end of the work day. I didn't really use it to reach out to many people, and I didn't get many reach outs over it. I attempted to email myself some stuff like old comp letters, but they blocked a good 90% of the emails I tried to send, it was very frustrating. I honestly can't remember how I copied them over, but it might have just been a USB stick or something. Do note that they log and track everything you do on that computer, so don't get cheeky and copy stuff like source (and really, what the hell would you do with it anyways). 5. At the end of the day, you're pretty much done with them and they're done with you. They will lock your computer and you will no longer be able to log in even locally. So make sure you got off whatever files you needed. 6. The next day, they offered an "Informational Session" for laid off employees. Do not go to this session. It was some pre-recorded call using 1996 Real Player 6 technology where the people just rehashed some of the information that was already in the email attachments (when you could understand them). There was no way to ask questions nor interact with the other people that were also having their time wasted. This one will probably leave you angrier than you were before the call, just skip it. 7. I also received my separation agreement the next day at ~2pm with details on pay and timelines. Seems like these went out throughout the week, so yours may come sooner or later. I had up until 5 days after my separation date to sign it (so more than 2 months). I just ended up signing it about a week later. They sent it through Echosign, a Docusign type site. 8. If you have questions, you can email peeps@fb.com and get a generic response that in no way answers whatever question you asked. You can email back and they might start getting helpful. They seemed to be very overwhelmed during our layoff-- hopefully they're better prepared for yours. 9. A few days later you'll receive your first of about 5000 emails, calls, and texts from LHH, the career transition service. More details on my impressions of them below. 10. A couple of weeks later, you'll get an email for returning your assets. The email will contain a PDF with a barcode for each asset you need to return (e.g. phone, computer, and portal [if those still exist]). You take it to a UPS store, they will scan each barcode, then scan the device tag on your device. If things match up, they'll take it and it's their problem from there. Make sure you get a receipt for each item returned. If an item is not on that list of barcodes, you don't need to return it (e.g. your badge you can keep). You can keep all accessories (power chargers, cables, mice, etc.) If you don't have an item they're expecting you to return, reach out to peeps@fb.com and explain the situation. The set of emails gave conflicting info about how long you have to return-- this email gave about 2 weeks while an earlier one said something like 30 days. I just returned it within the 2 weeks since it's essentially bricked for you anyways. 11. If your personal phone number was tied to the Meta phone, you'll need to get it transferred out quickly. The assets email has a link you use to request the transfer, but they only gave 5 days to do it. If you don't do it in time, it becomes property of Meta. 12. BEFORE YOUR SEPARATION DATE (not layoff date), I'd highly recommend doing whatever you can to maximize the 401k match. Meta will match your 401k contributions dollar for dollar up to $11,250, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS! It's free money. For me, I was lucky in that I wasn't laid off until the second week of 2023, so I deferred the max amount I could (75%) and got the full 2023 match from Meta. Just a little extra walking money. While you're on notice period, they'll continue to pull your 401k match as if you were still working there, so take that into account. 13. After the warn period has passed, you'll officially be laid off and no longer an employee of Meta. For me, this was Jan 13 (65 days after Nov 9). Your final paycheck will include your PTO payout in a lump sum. You do continue to accrue PTO while in the notice period. Your PTO payout will NOT have a 401k contribution taken out of it. 14. I received my final lump sum severance amount (as specified in your personal severance document) on Feb 3. They take taxes out of it and that's it (no 401k contribution, no pre-tax deductions, etc.) 15. Your FB benefits will end on the last day of the month of your separation date. The COBRA documentation will be sent to you in the mail a few weeks after your separation date. It will provide a website you go to in order to activate the benefits. You have 60 days to do this. It's nice in that the benefits are "active" even if you haven't signed up yet, as long as you sign up before 60 days. This means if, 30 days after your separation date, you haven't signed up but end up going to the hospital, you can still sign up and it'll be as if you already had the insurance before your visit. FB will pay for 6 months worth. This is a good amount and I highly recommend you take it if you don't have benefits elsewhere. They say you cannot take advantage of it if you have other benefits (e.g. through a spouse or new job). Getting laid off (or more specifically losing your insurance) is considered a life changing event, so you'll be able to sign up to, say, your spouse’s insurance even in the middle of the year. 16. You're free. The world is your oyster. Other notes: 1. Most of the documents in the initial email were helpful. Just about everything else was not. 2. You will be given instructions on how to access Workday externally. All of your W2s and paystubs will be in here, so you don't need to worry about downloading them before you lose access internally. 3. While using Blind, I asked for some information about the layoff and was almost immediately asked to re-verify my email. Blind got me. This is why I now have "ex-Meta" as my employer. You lose access to the company channel. 4. At the time I read news articles that said Zuck had a video call with laid off employees? If this shit actually happened, I missed it and never found info on how I was supposed to join it. 5. You'll immediately start getting spammed by LHH, the outplacement service. 6. You have until the end of the month of your separation to access ALL of your benefits (e.g. legal planning still works until then). After that, you can opt-in to COBRA, but you'll only get medical, dental, and vision. 7. I never heard a word from some of my teammates after the layoff, nor my manager again after I reached out to them on WP. In Nov I guess it was just as awkward for you all as it was for us, that may have been part of it. Just don't be overly surprised if relationships cool immediately. 8. You have up to 5 days after your separation date (so a few months away) to use up your wellness budget, so you don't have to rush buy $2k worth of stuff the day of layoffs. The career transition/placement service, LHH: 1. FB gives 3 months (I think) of premium access to LHH. This premium access includes their tools like a rebranded Indeed job board, some of the most worthless "career resource" articles and videos ever created, access to some useful tools like D&B Hoovers (company/contacts DB), a resume review/update, chats with a career coach, and live networking events. 2. This service is NOT automatically started; you have to activate it yourself. LHH will not get paid by FB until it's activated. This means you're going to be hearing from LHH, a LOT, until you activate or until the benefit expires (for me I had up until the day of my separation, so I had ~2 months to activate). I didn't activate until the very last day I could, so I got email after email, text after text, and even a couple of voice mails from their people explaining the benefit and why I should activate. 3. Anyways, when you're laid off (the layoff date, Apr 19 or whatever, not your separation date), you'll receive an initial email from them about joining a call specifically for laid off FB employees. Fun fact, if you join this call, you automatically activate your membership. That's right, you cannot do the intro call without activating your membership. I never did this call because fuck that. 4. You can then string them along for a few months if you want to hear their whole sales spiel. You can ask for extra benefits for fun, but they'll tell you they can't do it. No LinkedIn Gold ("But we have full access to LinkedIn Learning"- which is uh... owned by the same company I guess), no Leetcode ("But we... uhh... What's Leetcode? We have full access to LinkedIn Learning!"). 5. If you end up activating, you'll never hear from their sales people again. This is a benefit in itself, I guess. 6. I activated the last day I could after they said they had lots of resources for entrepreneurs. Narrator: They didn't. 7. I cannot stress how useless this service felt. 8. Their job board is a reskinned version of Indeed. Yeah. 9. They have this big archive of articles and videos they created, but I literally found no use in the stuff I tried. They also break what could be 1 or 2 articles into 15-part series, each with like 2 paragraphs. 10. They do give you access to some "premium" tools like D&B Hoovers. This was nice. I can't remember what the other tools were, but do know I found no use for them. 11. I submitted my resume, they sent it back 1.5 months (!) later, changed very little and had the most generic comments imaginable: "Having a ‘Key Skills’ or ‘Areas of Expertise’ section in your branding area allows readers to quickly identify your ‘hard’ skills, or functional abilities." They do offer group sessions where you can review resumes, but with how disappointing everything else had already been, I never tried it. 12. I did one session with a career coach. He was a nice guy, and really seemed to want to help. But I didn't find it useful enough to ever schedule another session. 13. Assuming you do want to use a career coach, their schedules always seemed to be booked up 2 weeks out. So getting time with them is painful. 14. Little hack, the career coaches have the ability to extend your service. Mine extended my service by a month and a half. 15. Live networking events are about people and their job searches. This does not mean just FB employees or just SWEs or whatever, but anyone that has LHH service. I found the one session I attended to be useless and didn't try another. They also have things like working on your LinkedIn Profile and stuff like that, but I found them to be less useful than content people put on YouTube for free. 16. So yeah... I feel like LHH is nothing but a CYA service by Facebook. They just don't really add anything. It doesn't cost you anything sign up though (and from what I can tell, costs FB a decent chunk of $), so you could sign up just to get their damn sales people off your back. There it is, my brain dump. Hope some is helpful. Good luck Metamate. Shit will work out. #severance #layoff #meta
HR post?
Nah fam, was SWE. Just trying to round up answers to some of the shit I had questions on a few months ago.
I suggest to make post like 5 times smaller then.
Really insightful. You’re kind for doing this, OP.
Wow, thanks for this. Where are you trying to make your next move OP?
🙏
Thank you, OP!
How many being laid off?
Thanks OP, great list. +1 to LHH being absolute garbage. Do yourself a favor and delete anything from them. The other hard lesson I learned is to never have my personal cell tied to a corporate account again. It was an absolute nightmare getting my number transferred over to my personal account. I came within a few days of losing my personal number forever.
Definitely a hard lesson. I'm fortunate that I kept my FB phone and personal phone separate. I have no idea how painful it was for those that did have to go through the process. I did find the 5 day window they gave to be pretty aggressive though.
GOD.
Thank you!! You are awesome for doing this!
Very nice of you sharing all this! It’s really painful to change accounts after being deactivated
Thoughtful and timely post from OP