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Meta has created secret blacklists of fired employees that even top managers cannot influence.
Many Meta engineers after massive cuts in 2022 (and not only then) were confident that they would easily return. One of them said anonymously that the corporation did not make it difficult, but rather impossible. An engineer with four years of experience says he had the highest performance evaluations and was praised by top managers. But he ran into «pitfalls» when he tried to return.
Managers gave the dismissed employee the «green light», HR organized the first stage of the interview — and then… silence. Later, he learned that HR Meta prohibits managers from contacting those who are on the «not suitable for rehire» list.
It turns out that Meta maintains internal blacklists that block the return of some former employees. And even those who had high-performance ratings can get there. Meta executives say that the mechanism looks rather dubious: HR can simply mark a person as «undesirable», and this will become a verdict. Such employees are not allowed to be hired under any circumstances. And the most interesting thing is that it is almost impossible to remove this mark.
«If a manager didn’t like you, it wasn’t hard to put someone on a list», — said one of Meta’s ex-managers.
The story of the anonymous manager is not unique, as dozens of former employees have faced the same thing. In many cases, they learned about the ban not from Meta, but from third-party recruiting agencies that were instructed by the company not to consider them. Even Meta’s top managers cannot help such employees. One of the executives tried to get the employee back, but was stymied by some hidden system.
In fact, companies have the right not to hire someone again, and this is perfectly legal, but hidden blacklists are something new. It’s all the more logical to bring a good employee back, says Laszlo Bock, former head of HR at Google.
«I’ve actually never heard of a company having a ‘do not rehire’ designation for former employees, because if an employee was a decent or good performer, you’d much rather hire somebody who actually knows your company and culture than somebody else», — adds Laszlo Bock.
For its part, Meta does not provide clear explanations of its policy. A company representative said only that there is a «system of criteria» that determines whether a person is eligible to return. But judging by the stories of the victims, these criteria are very vague. So far, there is no known case of a successful exit from the list. Some employees have contacted HR, lawyers, and vice presidents of the company, but to no avail.
Sometimes severance agreements contain provisions prohibiting former employees from reapplying for jobs. However, none of the former Meta employees confirmed the existence of such language in their agreements.
It is noteworthy that there are frequent cuts within Meta. Just to mention a few recent examples, in early January 2025 the company laid off 3,500 employees but increased bonuses for bosses by 200%. The other day, the corporation promised to fire 20 employees, and promised to reduce «even more» spies. Some of the cuts were related to articles about changing internal policies regarding «outdated» diversity programs.
Source: Business Insider