Meta employee fired day before bonus payout for 'outstanding performance'. Here's why

A former Meta employee claimed he lost his job for sharing a public company update with his wife.

In a move that underscores Meta’s growing crackdown on internal leaks, a former employee has claimed he was fired for sharing a company update with his wife—despite the information already being public.

A former Meta employee alleged losing his job over sharing a public company update with his wife (AP)

Riley Berton, who identifies himself as a ‘Staff Software Engineer, ex-Meta’ on LinkedIn, described his termination as "incredibly sad and terrible and so very very silly." He suggested that Meta’s rigid enforcement of its information-sharing policies has led to the dismissal of multiple employees under questionable circumstances.

Fired over a publicly available update?

Berton revealed that he shared a portion of an internal post on Workplace, Meta’s work communication platform, from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on 14 January. The post outlined stricter performance reviews for employees—details that had already been reported by Business Insider and The Verge after being leaked by an unknown source.

"It is important to note that this information had been leaked to Business Insider and The Verge by someone (not me)," Berton wrote on LinkedIn.

While he denied leaking the post to the press, Berton acknowledged sending it to his wife, a decision that ultimately cost him his job. He argued that if his wife had merely read the post over his shoulder or taken a photo of it on her phone, he would not have been penalised.

Suspicious timing of termination

Berton claimed that his dismissal came months after the alleged violation, coinciding suspiciously with a scheduled performance-based bonus.

"I had just received an 'Exceeds Expectations' rating for the prior year. Coincidentally, my termination date is the day before I was to receive a bonus for my outstanding performance," he noted.

He further alleged that similar incidents have led to the dismissal of "hundreds" of Meta employees, some for merely saving internal updates in their personal notes apps. "I am also hearing stories of people who copied and pasted the text of this post into their own Notes apps on their own laptops and were fired because Apple Notes syncs to iCloud," he claimed.

Check out his LinkedIn post here:

Meta remains silent

Meta has not publicly responded to Berton’s claims. However, company spokesperson Dave Arnold had earlier told The Verge:

"We provide regular reminders that leaking internal information, regardless of the intention, goes against our policies… We take this matter seriously and will continue to take action as we identify leaks."