Meta middle manager on $550k a year expresses fears of the 'great flattening'

A Meta middle manager earning $550,000 a year expressed their fears of the 'great flattening', saying it could thwart their plans to make a million by 2026.

As you'd expect, social media users are playing the world's smallest violin for the anonymous employee.

Before we get into their post, let's first explain what the 'great flattening' refers to.

The term came from Mark Zuckerberg at the start of the month as he looked ahead to the tech giant's plans for 2023.

Although Meta soared more than 20 percent on 1 February, overall the company lost more than $600 billion in market value last year.

As such, the Facebook founder told investors that November job cuts of 13 percent of the workforce were 'just the beginning' of his plans for streamlining.

"We're working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers to be more productive," he said.

The term 'job cuts' is enough to make any employee sweat, especially when you add the word 'flattening' to the mix.

But the Meta middle manager hasn't exactly garnered much sympathy from the online community.

While most of us are figuring out how to pay the bills amid rising inflation, they're worried about not landing a million dollar contract.

Taking to Blind, an anonymous forum for tech employees, they shared their predicament in a post titled 'Angry/Worried that it's all going to be taken away from me!'

Under the handle sadduck, they wrote: "I’ve fought so hard to get where I am, and now it may be all taken away from me this month in the great flattening. Listen to me humble brag and my first world problems. Thanks for not being there for me."

Twitter

The Meta worker said they're a tier 1 manager, a position that pays an eye-watering $550,000 a year.

Last year, they said they received 'multiple tier 1' offers from major tech companies including Google, Square, Uber and Stripe.

While they were 'so happy' back then, in 2023, things have 'gone to s***'.

"Not just stock price but now with the great flattening my odds of survival are 50/50," they continued, "Feeling buyer remorse. Maybe should have went with one of my other offers. F*** this, I'm so angry."

The embittered staff member said they were hoping to reach tier 2 by 2026, earning $1 million total compensation (TC).

They were also planning on retiring in the same year in a bid to dip out before they hit 40, adding: "I keep running my numbers, I think best case scenario I have to work till 45 now and that's assuming I can maintain a TC >500k job."

Those tiny violins are working overtime right now.

They finished with the sentence: "Made it to the top despite all the odds against me, and now in under a year I'm going to lose it all. F***!"

As said, people aren't too sympathetic about the situation.

"Those poor rich people might get 300k to take a 6 month vacation boo hoo," wrote one on Twitter, while another said, "Fired with *checks notes* $250k cash severance package."

Abaca Press / Alamy Stock Photo

A third added: "He might have to work until 45 god forbid."

One commenter pointed out the fact that Zuckerberg's focus is on the 'year of efficiency', and ultimately he wants middle managers to prove their worth.

Speaking about the post, they wrote: "Seems to be missing 'work hard to show my value' or 'be the middle manager Zuck needs me to be'."

But not everyone's against the employee, including this person who said: "S***ting on someone else's frustrations is never a good thing.

"He's not saying he will starve to death, he's just frustrated that he worked really hard (most likely sacrificed a lot) to get where he's at and is not having the outcome he expected."