'Terminated day before bonus payout': Meta employee fired for sharing public information with spouse, claims ‘witch hunt’

Amid Meta tightening its stance against leak of internal updates, a former Meta employee has claimed he was fired for sharing a company update with his wife, despite the information already being public. In a viral LinkedIn post, Riley Berton described the termination as "incredibly sad and terrible and so very very silly," suggesting that Meta’s internal crackdown on information sharing has led to the unjust dismissal of multiple employees.

Berton, who identifies himself as 'Staff Software Engineer, ex-Meta' on his LinkedIn profile, explained that he shared a portion of a post on Workplace, an internal work organisation platform of Meta, from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on January 14. 

The post, which addressed stricter performance reviews for employees, had already been leaked to Business Insider (BI) and The Verge, who in turn, had reported about it. "It is important to note that this information had been leaked to Business Insider and The Verge by someone (not me)," he wrote. 

While Berton emphasized that he did not leak the information to the press, he acknowledged sharing it with his wife—a move that ultimately cost him his job. "The timestamp on the BI post is right about the time I sent this post to my spouse so I can't have been the "leaker" or harmed the company in any way". If she had read the post over my shoulder or if she took a photo of the post with her cellphone, I would not be writing this," he explained. 

"If I took my laptop to a reporter and let them take a photo of the post, I would not be writing this."

His firing came months after the incident, on a date suspiciously close to when he was set to receive a 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," Berton noted, adding, "The "violation" took place on Jan 14th, the firing happened yesterday so it took a few months for it to happen." 

Beyond his own case, Berton alleged that "hundreds" of Meta employees have been similarly affected, dismissed for sharing work-related stress with their spouses. "I am also hearing stories of people who copy and pasted the text of this post into their own Notes apps on their own laptops and were fired for it because Apple Notes syncs to iCloud," he claimed.

With his time at Meta abruptly ended, Berton is now searching for new opportunities.

 

Meta has not publicly responded to Berton’s claims. However, Meta 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."

Two weeks ago, it was reported that the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media company had terminated around 20 employees for sharing confidential information outside the company.