A laid-off Meta engineer has alleged that he was routinely excluded and ostracised by his Chinese colleagues at the company.
A laid-off Meta engineer has alleged that he was routinely excluded and ostracised by his Chinese colleagues at the company. Meta employee Jeremy Bernier alleged race-based discrimination at the tech giant, claiming he was part of a team where “90% of his coworkers were Chinese”, and where “non-Chinese were routinely excluded, disadvantaged, and targeted for layoffs.”
Bernier was among the 8,000 employees affected by layoffs at Meta on May 20. He opened up about his experience with the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company on X.
‘6 out of 7 layoffs targeted non-Chinese’
In his lengthy post on X, Bernier claimed that certain Meta teams, particularly in ads and MRS, were “notorious for being Chinese dominated”. He alleged that despite non-Chinese employees being “the vast minority”, “6 out of the 7 layoffs I observed targeted non-Chinese”.
“I think Americans would be outraged if they knew that their own citizens were getting marginalized and laid off at their own companies, while Chinese promote themselves up, conquer entire orgs, and reap millions,” he wrote.
Bernier compared his experience at Meta with a hypothetical scenario at Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
“Imagine if Huawei in Shenzhen had entire orgs and leadership chains completely dominated by Japanese people who brazenly spoke Japanese at work without a care in the world that their Chinese coworkers don’t understand,” he wrote, adding that Chinese citizens “would be outraged” in such a situation.