In a nutshell: Meta reportedly keeps a secret list of former employees who, for unknown reasons, the company will not rehire. Even if an ex-member of staff was a top performer during their stint at Meta, being on the list means they won't be returning in any capacity.
Meta has laid off more employees than most since 2020 – an estimated 35,600. Business Insider reports that one of these was an engineer who lost their job after four years at the firm despite being repeatedly praised by his managers and told their work was "crucial." They were also informed that the layoff was a business decision, and that multiple managers wanted them back at the company and on their teams.
However, applying to twenty positions at Meta within a year of being laid off yielded no success for the ex-employee. Hiring managers expressed interest in bringing them back and set up a hiring calls with recruiters, but the recruiters would then ghost them.
After inquiring about why this was happening, the engineer was told that they were deemed to be "ineligible for rehire," which was when they realized they were on some kind of list.
This wasn't the only incident. There have been dozens of cases of laid-off workers who were ghosted while trying to get rehired at Meta, even when they had met or exceeded expectations during their previous employment at the tech giant.
Business Insider spoke to five former employee, including two managers, who all said Meta maintains internal "do not rehire" lists of ex-workers.
While there are some obvious reasons why an employee might find themselves on one of these lists, such as stealing confidential data from Meta or being a consistently poor performer, one former manager said it wasn't difficult to have someone's name added, especially if a manager didn't like the person.
Meta's barring of former workers from being rehired without a good reason and not informing them of the decision is an unusual practice within the tech industry. Lazlo Bock, Google's head of people operations for a decade until 2016, said it was "incredibly uncommon. This is very, very rare." Block said he's never heard of companies maintaining do-not-rehire lists. However, others in the tech industry say Meta isn't the only firm with these lists – they're just not talked about.
It's noted that lists of this kind are not illegal unless they discriminate against protected characteristics.
As for why people would want to be rehired by an employer that laid them off, one said, "It's the worst company I've ever worked for. But they also pay the best. If I could get in there for a couple more years and make bank, I would do it."
In January, CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees that 5% of the workforce, or around 3,600 people, were being laid off. The cuts were supposed to be performance-based, but reports state that many workers who met or exceeded expectations were among those let go.
Meta maintains a secret "do-not-rehire" list for ex-employees
