Facebook employee on maternity leave woke up to nurse baby, received news of layoffs

Anneka Patel, a Facebook employee, was impacted by mass layoffs at parent company Meta (Image credit: Anneka Patel/LinkedIn)

A Facebook communications manager on maternity leave was among the 11,000 Meta employees impacted by mass layoffs at the tech giant. Anneka Patel had woken up to nurse her daughter when she received an email informing her that she had been included in the layoffs.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg had announced earlier this week that extensive layoffs would begin at Meta on Wednesday. He said that by letting go of around 11,000 employees, the company would reduce its team size by about 13%. “We’re restructuring teams to increase our efficiency. But these measures alone won’t bring our expenses in line with our revenue growth, so I’ve also made the hard decision to let people go,” he said in a message to employees on Wednesday, adding that all Meta employees would soon receive an email informing them of their employment status.

For Anneka Patel, this email came 5.35 am – just a couple of hours after she woke up to nurse her daughter, Emilia.

“Emilia woke up at 4am so I nursed her and at 4:30am I got a text from my manager that she had been laid off,” Patel wrote in a widely-circulated LinkedIn post. “I lay in bed, refreshing my emails, talking to other coworkers, all of us on the edge of our seats whether we would be impacted, or commiserating with those who had already been notified.”

Only an hour later, she received an email informing her that she had been laid off from her role as communications manager at Facebook. “at 5:35am I got the email that I had been included in the layoffs. My heart sank,” wrote Patel. She went on to talk about her role at Facebook and the work she did at Facebook Groups.

Patel also addressed the “tough” question of what will come next for her.

With her maternity leave due to end in February, she is open to start working in the new year. Until then, Patel wants to enjoy time with her baby.

“ I’m going to continue to dedicate my time to my daughter over the next few months, and will be #opentowork in the New Year. While that’s a difficult decision to make knowing that it’s a competitive market out there with all the other tech layoffs, I know I’ll never get this time back with her,” she wrote.

Like its peers, Meta hired aggressively during the pandemic to meet a surge in social media usage by stuck-at-home consumers. But its business has suffered this year as advertisers and consumers pull the plug on spending in the face of soaring cost pressures and rapidly rising interest rates.

"Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected," Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to employees.

Meta, once worth more than a trillion dollars, is now valued at $256 billion after losing more than 70% of its value this year alone.

(With inputs from Reuters)