Ex-employee claims Meta dominated by Chinese workers, 6 of 7 laid off staff were non-Chinese

Meta’s decision to lay off around 8,000 employees on May 20 has sparked a lot of controversy online. One laid-off engineer in particular, Jeremy Bernier, has shared a series of posts accusing Meta of having a workculture like the Korean show Squid Game. And now, Jeremy has alleged that despite a large number of Meta employees being Chinese, the company fired more non-Chinese workers.

On X, Bernier claimed that the majority of some teams were dominated by Chinese workers, such as Facebook ads. Yet, as per the former Meta employee, non-Chinese were the ones who faced more impact from the layoffs. He wrote, "At Meta, 90% of my coworkers were Chinese, and non-Chinese were routinely excluded, disadvantaged, and targeted for layoffs. 6 out of the 7 layoffs I observed targeted non-Chinese despite non-Chinese being the vast minority."

Conversations in Mandarin at Meta?

Jeremy Bernier claimed that layoffs were just part of the picture. He insisted that the Chinese workers often excluded the rest of employees. "The most blatant and obvious way that non-Chinese are excluded is that Chinese primarily speak Mandarin at work," Bernier wrote, adding that while formal meetings were held in English if a non-speaker was present, "right after the meeting ended everyone would immediately switch to Mandarin".

The former employee compared this to a scenario where a Chinese company like Huawei was dominated by Japanese workers. Jeremy Bernier added, “I imagine Chinese citizens would be outraged, and never allow that to happen in the first place.”

Ex-Meta employee says Chinese workers excluded him from team lunch

Bernier also described what he said was exclusion during lunch and team events. He wrote that he joined an all-Chinese team with one other non-Chinese colleague, and said the group would go for lunch together without inviting them. Jeremy added, “ Me and the non-Chinese person would invite them, they'd always refuse, and then shortly after they'd disappear and get lunch together.”

On some office days, he said, he was the only non-Chinese person present and the rest of the team would still go out without him.

Recounting a team dinner at a Korean barbecue restaurant, he said two tech leads initially sat away from him and another non-Chinese colleague, later joining their side, but "spent the entire dinner speaking Chinese to each other." He wrote, "I could not understand how Meta could have 'Tech Leads' that so blatantly excluded teammates."

While Jeremy claimed that he had “nothing against Chinese people,” his post did receive some reactions online. One user wrote, “Guy at Meta is complaining that his Chinese co-workers only speak Chinese to each other. It's because speaking English is mentally taxing to them. You need near-native automatism to avoid mental fatigue.”

Another person joked that perhaps Jeremy should not focus on what the other workers were doing. The person wrote, “White guy: You all speak English to me! I should be the protagonist!” While one user added, “This is hilarious, and I can't stop laughing.”