Meta canceled job offers just weeks before engineers planned moves, say workers

I don't think this kind of thing is going to change anytime soon as long as corporate America works the way it does today.

- Budget cuts, layoffs, hiring freezes, etc. are always going to be held closely by the C-level / senior execs. For reasons good and bad ("we don't want to kill morale until we have to," "what if we did X, Y, or Z instead?" "if layoffs leak, the wrong people will start looking for new jobs...") that information isn't distributed until last-minute or you see the effects but don't know why.

- The other folks are busy trying to hire and get people in the door before the door slams shut. They don't know the CFO is going to say "no more hiring, withdraw offers" until it happens.

- Given the size of these organizations someone is always three weeks out from starting a job unless there's already a freeze in place.

If companies weren't obligated to try to make profits at all costs rather than having a longer-term view of the world -- if they didn't have to worry about getting sued for doing the humane thing instead of the profitable one -- then more companies might be willing to honor those offers and eat profits a few quarters in order to do right by their employees.

I suspect we'll soon see breakup clauses in job offers for senior hires, or direct regulation requiring the company to pay at least X weeks compensation if they break the offer. This will probably have the side effect of terminating contract to hire practices at companies.

I don't even get Meta recruiters. I've talked to quite a few of them now ("Hey, we saw you were a Software Engineer at Google...") and they are spectacularly misleading, or just ghost you if you ask them challenging questions.

- Meta had to reduce head count and would layoff existing staff whilst still bringing in new staff from oversea

- Meta would relocate people only to lay them off shortly after

It's not ideal, but perhaps this highlights how important it is to include a clause in the contract that says if employer changes their mind X weeks before intended relocation then they owe Y amount in reimbursement. If an employer refused to include such a clause then at least one knows that they might not put the money where the mouth is when they make an offer.

I understand how small business owners may struggle, but if you are meta the least you can do is compensate candidates for the risk and lost income. The law for companies of this size should be three months compensation paired with a three month visa extension.

This way companies will have to plan ahead, and said candidates be able to continue with a different company.

maybe some government issue with visas?

I'm have this paranoid supsicion that some powerful shadow (i.e. unkown) actor within the USA political landspace really wants to take Facebook/Meta down.

I suppose they did not go along somebody's political plans? so little trustworthy information sure makes my imagination take off