Former Meta recruiter claims she got paid $190,000 a year to do ‘nothing’ amid company’s layoffs

‘We weren’t expected to hire anybody for the first six months, even the first year’

A former Meta recruiter has claimed that she made $190,000 a year for doing “nothing” at her job, amid the company’s recent layoffs.

In a recent video posted to TikTok, Maddie, @maddie_macho, reflected on her time working at Meta for six months during 2021. Her post was also shared only days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s next round of layoffs, cutting more than 10,000 employees.

The clip, which was titled “Getting paid $190k to do nothing at Meta,” started off with the former job recruiter explaining how her company wasn’t hiring new workers while she was there.

“We weren’t expected to hire anybody for the first six months, even the first year,” she said. “That really blew my mind. Like ‘perfect, I’m just going to ride this out for a year, obviously I didn’t make that.’”

Regarding what she did all day, Maddie said that she was “learning”, as Meta had the “best onboarding and training” process that was “very thorough”.

She poked fun at how her “expectations” at the beginning of her job was to be “taking it all in”, before questioning some of the meetings she had to do.

“But the most that we did, this is the crazy part, is we had so many team meetings,” Maddie claimed. “Why are we meeting? We’re not hiring nobody. Just to hear how everyone else isn’t hiring anybody. And also, I was on a team where everyone was new, so none of us were hiring anybody.”

After noting that her co-workers and boss were just “trying to figure things out” at the job, she continued to make fun of her responsibilities at the company.

“I really miss it,” she added. “I wasn’t doing s*** pretty much. Um, that’s nice.”

In a follow up video, she shared why she got fired from Meta, after she first started working there in September 2021.  According to Maddie, when her TikTok video about the company’s benefits package went viral, people who worked at the company reached out to her and said that they loved it.

However, Maddie said that Meta wasn’t too pleased about the content on her account, as she claimed that she later got a write-up for posting on her story about how “challenging” her job could be. She claimed that while she stopped talking specifically about Meta, the company later went through “20 of her TikTok” videos and asked her if they thought they were “appropriate”. She said that she then decided to quit, a day before she was fired.

As of 17 March, Maddie’s videos have more than 210,400 views, with TikTok users in the comments poking fun at her time at Meta.

“See I wouldn’t have been telling anyone I wasn’t doing work lol,” one wrote.

“Getting paid 190k to do nothing is wild,” another added, while a third wrote: TEAM. MEETINGS…gotta block my damn calendar so I could have a day w/o meetings.”

Other people expressed how they could relate to Maddie’s work experience.

“I had the same experience for 4 months. Easiest paycheck ever lol,” one wrote.

“Same here!” another added. “I was making a lot of money at Amazon and didn’t hire anyone. Collected an $80k sign on and a volunteer severance.”

Earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced that more than 10,000 people were let go from Facebook and that Meta would also be leaving 5,000 empty jobs unfilled.

The business magnate said that at least some of those staff will be fired from Meta’s recruiting team and indicated that the others may be from non-engineering roles. He gave no indication of which staff may be let go and said affected staff would hear about their future in April and May.

He noted that the layoffs were part of a “restructuring” and Meta’s “year of efficiency” and that they may not be finished until the end of 2023.

“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” he wrote in a memo to staff. “It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success.”

This decision also came after the company already laid off about 11,000 people in November.

The Independent has contacted Maddie and a representative for Meta for comment.