Meta layoffs spark ‘Squid Game’ culture claims by ex-employee

When Meta laid off around 8,000 employees this week nearly 10% of its global workforce, the headlines focused on the scale of the cuts. Employees reportedly woke to termination emails arriving at 4am.

Jeremy Bernier, an engineer laid off from Meta, has emerged as one of the loudest voices during the post-layoff drama. On his X account, he wrote that Meta is"easily the most toxic company I've worked for" and that co-workers had long been using the same description of the culture.

"There is a reason why the Chinese call it 'Squid Game,'" he said. "Others refer to it as 'Hunger Games' or 'Lord of the Flies.' I think they're all accurate." In the hit Netflix show Squid Game, the characters who are deeply in debt are forced to participate in a deadly game where only one person survives at the end.

The origin of such a culture, according to Bernier, could be linked to the company's PSC process which refers to a ranking system based on a competitive comparison between coworkers every six months.

"Imagine working on a team where every six months, one of you is going to get axed," he wrote.

While ranking practices are common in many companies, including Amazon, Bernier implied that the effects of this practice are more intense at Meta.

He said the company's "bottoms up" culture in which technical leads (TLs) carry more de facto authority than managers was a "complete farce." In his account, this left employees' careers vulnerable to the judgment of people who held significant influence but faced little formal accountability. "I've seen managers and TLs throw others under the bus and get away with it," he wrote.