Laid-off Meta engineer reveals: 90% of the ads department are Chinese, speaking Mandarin all day, excluding you at lunch, the most toxic manager of his career

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Last week on May 20, Meta announced layoffs of 8,000 employees, and frontend engineer Jeremy Bernier was one of them. He recently posted a series of long threads on the X platform, exposing that Meta's ads division has long been dominated by Chinese employees, with non-Chinese being repeatedly excluded in meetings, lunches, and team dinners. (Background: Meta firmly refutes: absolutely no cooperation with China to censor Taiwan content or share user data) (Context: Is Zuckerberg in trouble? Meta antitrust case goes to trial, FTC demands forced divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp) On May 20, 2026, Meta officially laid off 8,000 employees. Just within these past two days, a laid-off frontend engineer named Jeremy Bernier reportedly posted a series of long threads on the X platform, laying out in full his firsthand experiences in Meta's Ads Org. The posts quickly went viral and ignited fierce debate in Silicon Valley tech circles. At Meta, 90% of my coworkers were Chinese, and non-Chinese were routinely excluded, disadvantaged, and targeted for layoffs. 6 out of the 7 layoffs I observed targeted non-Chinese despite non-Chinese being the vast minority. Certain orgs like ads and MRS are notorious for being… — Jeremy Bernier (@jeremybernier) May 23, 2026 Bernier joined Meta's ads division, and he described the ethnic composition of this department as extremely homogeneous: "90% of my coworkers were Chinese." He said this is not just a numbers issue, but the entire workplace culture has tilted accordingly. The most direct impact was language. "I'm not talking about occasional chatter, I'm talking about every single conversation being in Mandarin." He described how a dozen teammates and managers would gather in a circle and chat loudly, entirely in Mandarin, with the only two non-Chinese people on site forced to stand on the sidelines unable to understand or join in. This wasn't done behind people's backs—it was "loud and blatant, with complete disregard for others' feelings." Exclusion at lunchtime was a daily occurrence. The Chinese coworkers would regularly go eat together and never invited the non-Chinese. Bernier said he tried initiating invitations, only to be declined each time, but shortly after the rejection, a whole group would disappear off to lunch together. The scene at team dinners was even more like standing in front of a revealing mirror: at a Korean BBQ table, the non-Chinese and Chinese sat at opposite ends of the table, as if there were an invisible wall in between. "The one who refused to sit with us was our Tech Lead." These daily frictions ultimately materialized in the layoffs as a ratio that was hard to ignore. Bernier said he witnessed 7 layoffs in Meta's ads division, of which 6 targeted non-Chinese, even though non-Chinese were only an "absolute minority" in the entire organization. He emphasized that this is not his subjective feeling: "The fact that the department is 90% dominated by Chinese already exists—that's already a fact." He also named the Ads org and MRS as organizations within Meta "notorious" for being Chinese-dominated. When an entire org and the entire management chain are held by one single ethnic group, Bernier said, "their workplace culture naturally seeps in." He gave his own example: he's the kind of person who habitually questions things and dares to challenge "superiors," but he quickly discovered that this behavior visibly displeased his Tech Lead, who retaliated against him in various ways. He finally added what he considered an important stance: "I have no problem with Chinese people. I genuinely believe most people are good and aren't deliberately trying to exclude others. But regardless of intent, the result is that non-Chinese are excluded." His latest post revealed an even deeper management hell. Bernier described that the daily work of the ads team he joined was actually extremely tedious: most of the time was spent tweaking parameters, clicking through a bunch of outdated UIs to pull data, then screenshotting and pasting into Google Docs. The so-called "engineering work" was essentially just modifying configs. I joined Meta as a software engineer and was matched to an ads team. I thought I'd be coding (this is in 2024) and scaling high scale systems. Turns out the team was mostly tweaking parameters, clicking through outdated UIs on internal tools to pull metrics and screenshot paste… — Jeremy Bernier (@jeremybernier) May 25, 2026 But the real problem was not that the work was boring, but how the entire system operated. Every time you wanted to "ship" an adjustment, you first had to hold an alignment meeting with the Tech Lead, who would interrogate you line by line on the data and quiz you on whether you had analyzed every combination. As long as the TL didn't nod, shipping would be delayed. The TL would also directly tell your manager that you were "irresponsible about timelines," directly impacting your performance rating. "One negative review from the TL and you're done." Bernier used three words to describe this Tech Lead's behavior pattern: it was deliberate. "They'd ask me to do things I obviously had no background knowledge of, refuse to provide background knowledge, and then gaslight me for not being able to figure it out. They'd even ignore me directly when I greeted them." He also heard that this TL had tried to alter deadlines in files to make a certain employee appear late on submissions. "I really felt like he was setting me up to fail." The manager's problems were even worse. Bernier said this was the most toxic manager he had encountered in his career, and what chilled him most was personally witnessing this manager "deliberately drive another new employee toward failure," pushing the person to seek psychiatric treatment, and then firing them. After that performance cycle ended, this manager suddenly announced an 8-month leave, then left the company. In his posts, Bernier pointed out an even more fundamental problem he observed: Meta's performance review system (PSC) has already distorted everyone's behavior. "At some point I realized that everyone's real goal isn't to solve problems, but to craft a good-looking story for PSC." He said cross-team collaboration and pulling more people in is regarded in PSC as "higher-level work" and therefore more valuable; conversely, if one person can finish things on their own, it's assumed "this couldn't have been that hard," and the value is underestimated. This distorted incentive structure means engineers who are genuinely capable of solving problems independently get the short end of the stick, while those skilled at manufacturing "a sense of complexity" and "collaboration narratives" are more likely to win in performance reviews. He said that another engineer who joined on the same day as him resigned on the exact day he hit one year, because you have to stay at Meta for a full year to keep your sign-on bonus. These two posts sparked massive discussion in the tech community, with public opinion clearly divided. Supporters believe he spoke out about a long-standing "tacit understanding" issue in Silicon Valley regarding ethnic echo chambers: when 90% of a department and the entire management chain are held by a single ethnic group, intentionally or unintentionally, minorities struggle to get fair opportunities, and workplace inclusivity exists in name only. Critics, on the other hand, question his logical leaps: "Coworkers speaking their native language doesn't equal discrimination," "Not being invited to lunch doesn't mean you're being targeted," "Layoff decisions involve many factors—you can't conclude discrimination just from ethnic ratios." Some believe he escalates cultural differences and workplace discomfort into a racial issue, which is unfair to Chinese employees as a whole. Bernier himself also admitted that he cannot produce a smoking gun "proof of discrimination"—all he can speak to is the numbers he observed and his personal feelings. Meta has not issued any official response so far, nor is there any information about an investigation being launched. At the end of his article, he proposed several suggestions: mandate the use of English in the office, set higher standards for team inclusivity for managers, and investigate potential cases of discrimination. But he also conceded, "Honestly, as long as the entire management chain up to the VP level is dominated by a single ethnic group, language, and culture, I don't believe anything will change." In the short term, this is a debate without a resolution, but how to interpret it—everyone has their own yardstick.

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