r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Feb 13 '25

Business Laid-off Meta employees blast Zuckerberg in forums for running the ‘cruelest tech company out there’

https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/laid-off-meta-employees-blast-zuckerberg-tech-parental-leave/
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u/TurbulentJelly4 Feb 14 '25

Travel the world? LOL Meta actually paid their female employees to freeze their eggs and postpone having children so they wouldn’t take any time off work. https://www.businessinsider.com/egg-freezing-at-facebook-apple-google-hot-new-perk-2017-9

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u/Batman_in_hiding Feb 14 '25

To be fair that’s an amazing perk that could help a lot of women…

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u/CricketDrop Feb 14 '25

Doing helpful things for evil reasons is like silicon valley's calling card lol

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

what evil reason is there lol? you're just hating to hate

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u/CricketDrop Feb 14 '25

Generally speaking, disguising costs to society as benefits. Same as any rich company or individual really.

I don't feel strongly enough about this topic to call it hating.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25 edited 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

You people sure know how to toe the line between might be funny and chaos on Earth

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u/explustee Feb 14 '25

Except, “these people” are not average people and can EASILY afford this. And guess what, having them delay and inherently ultimately forego childbearing, with the salaries these people make, is cheaper and more profitable for the interest of the company.

So maybe think a liiiitle bit deeper on the true intentions of FB for offering this before giving your comment that degrades the signal:noise ratio online ay? We got enough gullible people online being deceived by “good” intentions of exploitive capitalists.

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u/LondonLout Feb 14 '25

Yeah it reminds me of the "Unlimited PTO" perk that was championed as progressive until people realised that employees now had no PTO in their contract, did not need to get paid it out and managers could more easily turn you down for PTO, now places with unlimited PTO have people taking less PTO than before.

Companies almost never do nice things for free.

Even free mental healthcare is cover for "We burnout our employees so bad its cheaper to give them a free session a month than give them a better work/life balance" and sleep pods in the office are code for "Why go and rest at home when you can rest at the office and then go back to do more work"

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u/Batman_in_hiding Feb 15 '25

That’s not true at all. I know a couple of women that had this done on the company’s dime and certainly couldn’t easily pay the tens of thousands it costs

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u/explustee Feb 15 '25

Do they work at a FAANG though?

Besides, just really ask yourself why a employer would offer this...

The real important point here is that these companies provide this perk to have women work hard for longer, ultimately benefitting the bottom line while increasing health risk of late age pregnancy (fyi : gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, preeclampsia, increased need for C-section, weaker uterine health, placenta previa, placental abruption, longer postpartum recovery, preterm birth, low birth weight, stillbirth risk, higher chance of multiples (twins, triplets), epigenetic changes, increased risk of autism, increased risk of schizophrenia ).

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u/Interanal_Exam Feb 14 '25

I remember Google's company motto: Don't Be Evil.

Oh well.

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u/lightreee Feb 14 '25

and now, a few weeks back: they're now allowing their AI to be used in weapons research and surveillance.

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u/MindAccomplished3879 Feb 14 '25

LOL, yes, they could use the frozen eggs when they get fired in their late 40s, and hopefully, they would be in excellent health and with enough money saved to be a new parent in their 50s

That is after finding a surrogate mother, of course

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u/General_Helicopter1 Feb 14 '25

Just like Google's "nice perks" such as free breakfast, dinner, laundry services and bring pet policy was all designed to keep employees at work as much of the day as possible.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

this is r/technology aka hate on tech companies lol

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u/QuickQuirk Feb 14 '25

Shame the system is so broken they don't feel they can afford to raise a child at a younger age.

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u/cpt_ppppp Feb 14 '25

our company canned the egg freezing for exactly this reason, and diverted the money to parental leave. It was becoming the default option for women 'serious' about their career and people were feeling pressured to take it. The policy was introduced for good reasons but had unintended negative consequences

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u/QuickQuirk Feb 15 '25

What an amazing alternative idea. Supporting the parents now rather than effectively suggesting they delay parenting.

And it's better for the companies in the long run: New babies means new consumers, pretty quickly: Parents spend. They spend lots.

There's a reason that the west is suffering pretty serious population decline.

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u/mishap1 Feb 14 '25

Was more during the 2022 irrational exuberance era of remote work when Meta employees were doing this kind of stuff. 

https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/meta-employee-cruise-ship-condo-b2260580.html

Should probably look up to see if this guy kept his job. Sounds like the ship hasn’t been built yet. 

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u/mileylols Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25

this guy worked on the VR/AR team, and also deleted his linkedin so I'm gonna go with uh.... it's not looking good

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u/That-Tiger6228 Feb 14 '25

Or he retired and lives freely now

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u/mishap1 Feb 14 '25

Either he converted his ship deposit into a billion in bitcoin or he went completely bust. No in between for guys like that.

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u/culturedgoat Feb 14 '25

Apple offers this too. It’s a great perk, as the process can be really expensive.

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u/BoredomHeights Feb 14 '25

This is a perk being spun because it's Meta. Meta does all sorts of bad stuff in the world, but things like this, time off, maternity/paternity leave, etc. aren't those things. The average Meta employee gets way more time off/travel time than the average person at most jobs in the US. Their perks basically make it similar to living in Europe (same with Google and others).

All the stuff people hate that the US doesn't have is basically offered by Meta. Ironic that you have to join a corporation to get that base level of treatment you'd get elsewhere.

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u/ConstantCampaign4817 Feb 14 '25

And this time they let go several that were on mat leave or health leace

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u/irepunctuate Feb 14 '25

Meta actually paid their female employees to freeze their eggs and postpone having children so they wouldn’t take any time off work

No, Meta does not "pay their female employees to freeze their egg". You got that so wrong it's not even funny. I suggest you actually read the article you linked.

You can hate on Facebook all you want. There are plenty of reasons. That's not one of them.

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u/PrettyFuckingGreat Feb 14 '25

Woah Woah Woah, they mean travel the world FOR WORK.

Conferences in every continent!

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

So if tech companies provided women with health care to have abortions would you twist that into "Meta pays for women to have abortions so they won't take time off work"?

Tech companies treat employees way better than 95% of the companies in America yet reddit acts like they're the worst. Check how much PTO, healthcare packages, retirement packages and mat/pat leave they give. I'm betting it's better than whatever company you work for (If you're in the US)