Jakarta –
Within a month the two social media giants, Half And Twitter, both have made layoffs affecting thousands of employees. But the style of the top management of the two companies (CEO Meta Mark Zuckerberg and owner of Twitter Elon Musk) when announcing layoffs is very different.
Earlier this month, Musk laid off half of Twitter’s employees, or about 3,700 people, after buying the social media company for $44 billion.
Twitter employees learned they were fired through email, and some even found out after being unable to access company email or office equipment. The firing email I received also didn’t have a signature, just the word “Twitter” at the bottom.
These layoffs occurred globally, starting at Twitter’s headquarters in the United States, to its representative offices in India, Ghana and Indonesia. In a tweet, Musk said that Twitter had no choice but to fire and that affected employees would receive three months’ severance pay.
A week later, it was Zuckerberg’s turn to announce the layoffs at Meta. The parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram has laid off 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its total staff.
Zuckerberg takes a more personal approach than Musk. He wrote a letter that was signed and publicly shared on the Meta website.
In his letter, Zuckerberg apologized for the decision. He admits he was wrong when he predicted that the e-commerce business surge that began at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic would continue.
The letter also explains what compensation the terminated employee will receive, such as 16 weeks of severance pay, severance pay, six months of health insurance and special support for migrant employees.
But Zuckerberg is certainly not the perfect boss. Washington Post reporter Will Oremus revealed that Zuckerberg received no questions on a Zoom video call with fired employees, as quoted by Fortune, on Friday (11/11/2022).
After seeing the ongoing layoffs on Meta and Twitter, some netizens on Twitter acknowledged how Zuckerberg is more sympathetic while criticizing Moss.
“I know hating on Meta at every opportunity is trendy, but respect for the way they handled layoffs,” photographer Daniel Cuthbert said in a tweet.
“It took Elon Musk to make Mark Zuckerberg a hero,” UCLA professor and Sarah T. Roberts said in a tweet.
Watch the video “Mark Zuckerberg apologizes after firing 11,000 Meta employees”:
(vmp/rns)
