When my good friend Anya Smith told me about what happened to her while working at Meta (formerly known as Facebook), it stopped me in my tracks. What’s so powerful about this story is how universal it is.
I first connected with Anya through a wonderful organization called Changing Work, a fantastic group dedicated to reducing dysfunction and improving organizational leadership practices in the workplace due to all the people struggling globally with workplace toxicity.
This connection has turned into a wonderful friendship and over the last year I’ve had so many enlightening exchanges with Anya, including being featured on her popular podcast (link below if you’re interested). Earlier this year in 2024, I did a big online event dedicated to ending bullying in the workplace. Anya shared with me the following story about her experience working at Meta as it’s connected to my mission of ending both bullying and providing mental health support to others.
There are so many enlightening gems here, especially regarding how workplace dysfunction can sometimes be very subtle and indirect, yet just as destructive. Grab some popcorn, kick back, and I hope you get as much value from reading this as I got from writing it.
A Constant Stream of New Managers
“I’m so interested to learn about your time at Meta and what you experienced while working there,” I said to Anya. “Tell me everything.”
“At first, being at Meta was a complete dream,” Anya said to me excitedly. “I started as a contractor and the sense of imposter syndrome was there. I was coming off of a burnout from working at Amazon, and I’m grateful for that transition. After starting off as a contractor, I went full-time at Meta.
“Starting out as a talent sourcer, I then tried to go for a lead position, as I was seeking a growth position. I switched from a sourcer to a recruiter to help align myself better with those career goals. After a couple of years, the growth stagnated, and I had a couple of maternity leaves. I didn’t get the leadership positions I was apply to, but got the feedback, ‘Hey, we see your potential to be a leader’.
“From there, it became a rapid growth spiral at Meta, with lots of transitions and a constant stream of new managers. The growth that was happening was more ‘opportunistic’ in the sense that if your manager was a new manager, they were setting certain expectations in accordance with their manager. It seemed to be more about falling in line and luck than about actual leadership.
“It Was Never Enough”
“After being there for six years, I was turned down for three promotion opportunities in a row. I was overseeing the training of people and the leadership of people, together with managing lots of clients…but it was never enough.
“Management made me feel like there was something not right with me. But that didn’t seem right to me, as people were promoted a while back who were not doing nearly what I was doing. It wasn’t clear to me what I was missing, and I wasn’t getting the right management support to say what that was. Even when I met all those goals, I still wasn’t getting that recognition. It messed with my mind.
“It wasn’t outright bullying in the typical sense, but there was very real systemic dysfunction. It was so mind-numbing: I was putting in all this effort and it was never enough. And then while feeling this way, I see others doing the same thing or even less and they move up. It was so opportunistic and also a matter of luck.”
“Did they say why they wouldn’t move you up to those higher positions that you deserved?” I asked.
“They said they wouldn’t move me up because I wasn’t showing the ability to influence people,” Anya said. “What the heck does that even mean? How is that even clear at all? How do you measure it? There’s nothing tangible about that feedback, and nothing I can do with that.
“What it really means is that you’re someone who consistently shows your manager what you’re doing, so that they can see that – and that’s not a real thing. I get it, and at the same time I don’t get it.
“I was working with Directors, overseeing and training seven recruiters to hit their goals. I was working with project managers as well. I was doing all of this, and I still wasn’t promoted to the next level.”
“Anya, it sounds to me like you were doing even MORE than the leaders were doing there. I see what you’re saying here. I’m a Director in my current position and it’s a high level to be at – for you to be training Directors, that’s literally a Senior Director position if not something higher. I’d like to acknowledge that you are completely justified in how you felt, and it was definitely ridiculous that you were being treated as some kind of junior employee when the reality was quite the opposite.”
“Thank you for that,” Anya said to me, “and that’s spot on.”
Now more from Anya: “As frustrating as it was at times, it was actually hilarious in a big way as well,” she said. “There were people at those higher leadership positions doing none of this, or only a portion of it. The glass ceiling kept moving up. The management I was getting was incredibly inconsistent, and that stagnated my growth. Because of this weird situation, I couldn’t go for other leadership positions or even other roles in general, leaving me feeling confused. The truth is that it was really messing with my mind and I was ultimately getting the message that I’m not good enough. For whatever reason, I just kept not measuring up, despite all the work I was doing and how much value I was bringing to Meta. Other people were given opportunities to work with certain important clients and it was all so incredibly random.”
It Was a Very Dark Time
“I’m doing all these things, and yet someone can be randomly given a client that has more hiring opportunities, which leads to different outcomes for them,” Anya said to me. “If you’re given a head count of 100, and someone else is given a head count of 200, and they fill those 200 they look more interesting to management even though it has nothing to do with skill and was simply about the randomness of who was assigned to what account.
“Each time I didn’t get a promotion, it got even harder. The second time I didn’t get it, it was the hardest thing for me. I thought, why am I bothering with this? I don’t just mean bothering with the promotion, I mean bothering with life. It was dark. Part of what made it worse is that I wasn’t expecting it to play out this way, and I wasn’t expecting to feel this way about how it was all happening.
“To go into this second time I was denied the promotion, I had made SO much happen at Meta. We had really grown the team. We had all this restructuring that I was managing. What I did was so incredibly impactful regarding training the team, and the huge outcomes and positive bottom-line influence it had. Not getting this was really, really dark for me. And no one seemed to be able to relate to me. I got some high-level superficial feedback like, ‘Oh, you didn’t get to this level, but maybe next time.’ It made me want to give up because it was just never enough, and there was no management to point me towards any kind of real progress because management was constantly changing all the time.
“Sometimes bullying isn’t about someone who is outright mean to you. Sometimes it’s in the structure and the system that keeps deteriorating your confidence. It deteriorates you because it doesn’t give you a sense of fair opportunities, a sense of how to grow in a fair way and be properly evaluated. It doesn’t take into account what might be lacking in the system and overall structure. I’m not saying I know the right way to do this, but the way I was experiencing was definitely something that was hurting me internally a lot. I knew this ultimately wasn’t the right environment for me, which is why I was getting my Master’s degree and pursuing other career options.
“It made me feel like I had to be someone different, someone more professional, someone more like my managers. It was always a ‘you need to be something different, to be better’ kind of loop I was in. It was never about seeing who I am and allowing me to be the best me I could be. I never felt like I was recognized for the great work I was doing, especially in being myself and inspiring others around me. I felt so internally not aligned with this structure and way of operating.”
To add to Anya’s powerful vulnerability here: she wasn’t able to be fully herself at Meta, which limited her potential there, the impact she could make, and how she felt about herself. I really relate to her story here because she was being placed in a box, something I’ve experienced all too many times. This often happens to many people at companies of all sizes. Instead of seeing the greatness in her, the management at Meta decided to limit her by forcing a square peg into a round hole. One of the core messages in my blogs, books, and speeches is that there’s enormous power in being fully yourself. For companies to succeed more and profit more, they need to encourage people to be fully themselves.
Denied for a Promotion Yet Again
“The third time I was denied a promotion, I was just about to leave for my second maternity leave,” Anya said. “They said things like, ‘You were performing at the next level like we talked about, but we didn’t have time to evaluate it. There’s also a concern about going into an economic downturn.’
“This left me thinking: Huh? So if it was a different time, and a different economic condition, then I would get promoted after all? But earlier I wasn’t promoted for other random reasons. It was just such a shit show. I even get upset just thinking about it. It was all so discouraging, and enough was enough. When it happened for a third time, it became clear to me that it wasn’t me and it was really them.“
To piggyback off what Anya is saying here: leaders are supposed to inspire you to greater heights, not shrink you to smaller levels. Meta management was diminishing Anya and not really giving her a chance to shine at higher levels in the organization, which was a fundamentally flawed situation. Anya was performing at an elite level, and the reasons for not promoting her were becoming increasingly vague and nonsensical. To realize that a situation is not about you and is really about someone or something else takes a high degree of self-confidence and self-awareness. You can own your faults all you want, though if the people and organization you’re working with are fundamentally broken, there will never be a proper resolution or real progress forward. This is not about condemning others, but rather realizing the truth about a difficult situation so that you can get your self-esteem back.
What happened to Anya at Meta is very similar to what happened to me while working for a very toxic company in The Netherlands, so I fully empathize with Anya here and I know how she felt.
Things Briefly Get Better, Then Layoffs Hit Hard
“At that time, as I was finishing my Master’s, I started looking for other opportunities at Meta,” Anya continued. “I reached out to another hiring manager at Meta who had heard about me and did value my experience, and I was able to convert to a different position in people analytics. I enjoyed the team, the new space, the new challenges, and my manager there was supportive in terms of giving me guidance and growth opportunities.
“And right when things were finally getting a bit better, that’s when layoffs were upon us, and everyone was so incredibly stressed out, including the managers – we all felt the reality of this. The managers weren’t given the right support as far as how to handle themselves and it was affecting everyone. It was this isolating thing that was happening to the managers who were trying to keep their composure and manage us, but they didn’t have enough support for themselves as far as how to handle these types of situations while being good leaders for others around them. Everyone did their best and we championed the difficult situation together, but the pervading feeling at the company was one of being disheartened.
“We had these Q&A sessions with Mark Zuckerberg, and all he would say is, ‘Well, what’s going to happen is that once we get through these layoffs, then things will be able to go back to normal because people really appreciate challenging work and having opportunities, and that’s what will happen once we get through these layoffs.’ That’s all he really said and focused on saying: Let’s get through these layoffs.”
Zuckerberg is certainly not the only one who falls short when it comes to leadership. As I’ve been keynoting on authentic leadership around the world, one story I’ve often shared is regarding a Fortunate 500 company I worked for in Towson, Maryland that went through a brutal round of layoffs. When the CFO (the Director’s boss) came to speak to our department, he literally didn’t mention the layoffs at all, leaving the team even more confused and scared instead of reassured. In Zuckerberg’s case, he did mention the layoffs, but like this CFO he missed an opportunity to use the situation as an opportunity to bring the company to a higher level of success and togetherness.
Instead of getting up in front of the company and giving employees an artificial and nebulous sense about what happened, both this CFO and Zuckerberg could explain precisely why the company had to layoff all these colleagues. They could then be transparent about a challenge the company is having in part of their inner workings, and use sincere encouragement to solidify behavior that will actually address the root cause.
Anya Got Laid Off, Noticing Huge Negative Culture Shifts
“I ended up getting laid off,” Anya said, “and once I found out that I got laid off, it was easier to leave knowing that the culture changed. Meta went from being this magical place with so much opportunity, to becoming a place where there wasn’t so much opportunity. It was more about luck, where you happened to land in the organization, and hopefully your manager is good. It wasn’t about growth anymore, it was more about getting pigeonholed into these systemic flaws and struggling through it.
“As someone who is creative, thinking big, and adding value, that kind of thinking wasn’t prioritized anymore. And that’s OK – l get that part of this is business. At the same time, it was really something so much deeper. After I left I was talking to a couple of people at Meta who were now looking to leave even though they didn’t get laid off, because of how much the culture had changed. I was talking to people who were top performers and exceeding expectations over and over again, yet in their performance reviews, receiving feedback as ‘underperformers’. The exact same thing I had experienced! What they were doing well before that – something that was once appreciated – was now being scrutinized, and not in the right way. The culture was completely different.
“I know part of this is natural when the business grows and matures. But for me in my own headspace, I’ve realized that I don’t want to go to a big company like that anymore because of how much it limited me in terms of what I can do. It messed with me so much because so many things were changing and I was so underappreciated. You’re giving your sense of self-worth to something you think will support you, but it can’t because there’s too much chaos. It’s doing its best and that’s OK, but you can lose yourself so easily inside of that.”
Something I talk about often – and I can’t emphasize enough – is the huge importance of appreciating your colleagues and employees. A simple and genuine “thank you” goes a LONG way to maintaining high performance. A common theme I’ve noticed at a lot of dysfunctional companies I’ve worked at is that they don’t seem to appreciate their team members. Only once someone’s self-esteem is destroyed and/or they decide to leave, then they’re thrown some half-hearted appreciation, often when it’s too late. What if we made appreciating and celebrating each other a normal part of how companies operate?
The other key to take from Anya’s wisdom here is having the self-awareness to know where you thrive. For some, big companies might work for them, and for others, not so much. The key is to know and understand yourself so that you can see what works for you, and what doesn’t. This kind of self-development, self-exploration, and self-introspection is crucial to your ongoing success. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to find a job where everything is perfect, but it does mean you can continue making adjustments along your journey.
Concluding Thoughts From Anya About Leadership at Meta
“I don’t regret being at Meta at all, as it taught me a lot about structure and goals,” Anya pointed out. “But it also taught me that it’s important to not lose sight of the people piece when things are growing and getting harder. We lost sight of that, especially during growth periods, and it definitely showed in terms of the culture and the people. I felt a bit sad about all this.
“When I left Meta, I felt such a disconnect from the people there. You think it’s a family and all that, and yes I know me being remote played into it, but I didn’t even stay in touch at all with my manager there. It just made me sad. You see and experience things that weren’t really what they seemed to be, and it makes you question what was really going on.
“I do want to acknowledge how challenging it was for leadership too during all this at Meta, and the disconnect I felt after I left was related to that. There was a part of me that hoped the care I experienced while working for the organization would stay once I left, and yes, some of it stayed around, but some of it definitely didn’t. And that’s OK too, as it was a tough time for everyone.
“The key I want to share here is that I never felt like I was directly bullied, but there was that underlying current of not being valued enough. There wasn’t enough time to have a sense of direction. The hurt you feel when you are repeatedly not prioritized when opportunities are presented to you, and the ‘rating’ metrics that were so systemic were simply not fair. There’s so much randomness and chance to it all, and that isn’t accounted for. And on top of that, there wasn’t enough guidance. In a way, this experience caused me the same amount of harm as being blatantly bullied – while a less direct method to feeling that way, the result was the same. This isn’t something I need to hide because I simply would like to honor my feelings here and share the truth.”
Anya Smith is the Founder of SelfFull, an innovative self-development app with microlearning, gamification, and AI. She’s also a podcast host and on a mission to empower one billion people to connect authentically. Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, professional speaker, and authentic leadership expert. Check out this in-depth discussion Anya and Jeff had on Anya’s podcast about getting through dark and challenging times.
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