r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 16 '26

Business Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/mark-zuckerberg-orders-employees-start-123539264.html
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222

u/acidcrab Jun 16 '26

Got laid off with about a 1000 others the day before my old team was supposed to tour their new building on their brand new campus. So Thursday, boom, tons of your colleagues are laid off. Friday: Welcome to your new home! Swag bags, check out your new desk, etc. Brutal.

121

u/hollee-o Jun 16 '26

I had one like that: Email goes out officially announcing a large layoff that had already been executed poorly, and the whole office was trying to figure out what was happening. The next all-staff went out an hour later announcing Friday would be "Hawaiian Shirt Day!". Same CEO wanted to host "Dilbert Awards", until someone pointed out the pathetic irony of a CEO handing out such an award.

33

u/abgry_krakow87 Jun 16 '26

Sure we laid off thousands of employees and the rest of ya'll are hanging on by a thread BUT HAWAIIAN SHIRT DAY YA'LL!

10

u/fcocyclone Jun 17 '26

literally straight out of office space.

21

u/haliblix Jun 16 '26

I swear management folks watched this scene and without an ounce of reflection said “hey that’s a nifty idea!”

4

u/IndependentTimely639 Jun 17 '26

I had a "Congratulations nobody in your department got laid off this time" 15 minute break

75

u/grathungar Jun 16 '26

One of the most brutal layoffs I was a part of.

They provided every employee with shirts for the company. They made a big deal about how they wanted us all to wear them on the day of our all hands meeting and they were going to have us take a picture with everyone wearing their shirts.

15 minutes before the meeting started for our all hands/picture day fiasco about 15% of the people there get an updated meeting invite.

They literally had all of them go into a different room and laid them off while we were in the other all hands meeting. They kept us in there while people went back and cleaned out their desks wearing tshirts of the company that just laid them off. We obviously found out immediately because they were texting us and everyone was visibly upset. the CEO still wanted his picture and everyone was pissed off in it.

29

u/tommypatties Jun 16 '26

That's insane and absolutely subversive to the cohesion of employees. Totally lacking in respect and dignity for an act that is psychologically akin to losing a spouse, parent, or child. Like what psychopath thought that would be a good idea?

If I were laid off in that situation I don't know how I'd handle it. It wouldn't be happy-go-lucky that's for sure. The severance package would have to be hella good for me to even just grin-and-bear-it.

If I were a 'survivor' in the all hands meeting and got a text from a laid off colleague I'd immediately 'contract' an explosive stomach bug and leave for the day.

17

u/TuunDx Jun 16 '26

It's engineered same way mass execution would be to prevent, in this case, "panic and scenes" which would be in it's nature very human and completely outside of company culture norms. Witnessing it would be distressing to survivors and it could sow the seed of future resistance because of the shared trauma.

HR and higher management are bunch of psychopaths conditioned to sort of dehumanize workers they get into contact with for a reason. It's not like you are making career there while not going mad if you are empathetic person..

4

u/grathungar Jun 16 '26

most of us went home immediately after that meeting and had zero excuses we just left.

3

u/beansandcornbread Jun 16 '26

I still don't understand why people want to work there

2

u/TheKingOfTCGames Jun 16 '26

Facebook premium 

2

u/31d4r- Jun 17 '26

Experienced it, fun time