According to a new report from Business Insider, Meta keeps internal block lists of anyone who has worked at the company and is ineligible for rehire.
Former employees can make the list even if they have a record of good performance, the outlet notes.
Five former employees, including two managers, told Business Insider that Meta keeps track of former employees who violate company policies or are underperforming and gives them a “non-regrettable attrition” tag. Managers could reportedly add former employees without documented performance problems to “do not rehire” lists in “minutes” by “just filling out a form.”
Nearly 4,000 workers were impacted by what Meta said was performance-based cuts earlier this year.
While getting on a Meta block list may be as simple as completing a form, getting off one is more difficult.
According to Business Insider, one senior Meta engineer blocked from being rehired was told by a hiring manager that even a sign-off from a vice president wouldn’t change their status. Another hiring manager said they had yet to see someone get off a list and have a chance to interview at Meta again.
The number of former employees on Meta’s block lists was unclear.
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Two employees impacted by Meta’s 11,000-person layoffs in 2022 told the outlet they had a history of earning “Exceeded Expectations” on their performance reviews, but discovered they were labeled “ineligible to be hired” by Meta HR when re-applying for different roles through third-party staffing agencies.
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In response, a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider that several factors determine whether an employee is eligible to be rehired, including “the last rating prior to separation and any other recent performance signals” and how the employee left the company (“policy violation, performance termination, voluntary resignation, etc.”).
Meanwhile, Meta’s block lists don’t appear to be the norm throughout the industry.
Laszlo Bock, Google’s head of people operations from 2006 to 2016, told BI in a follow-up story that he has “never seen” a formalized, “large scale, systematic approach” like Meta’s.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Bock wrote in a LinkedIn post about the block lists.
Meta had 74,067 employees as of December 2024.