Some Facebook employees are complaining they're hiring 'bleh' people, and it's damaging the company

REUTERS/Charles Platiau/Pool

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens to French President Emmanuel Macron after a family picture with guests of the "Tech for Good Summit" at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 23, 2018.

• Some Facebook employees are complaining that new hires at the company are "bleh."
• The company's stock dropped 20% this week after a nightmare Q2 2018 earnings report, and employees took to anonymous app Blind to vent.
• Some believe Facebook's hiring practices are partly at fault for the issues the company is now facing.

Facebook employees have been venting their worry and frustration after the company's stock fell off a cliff - and some are pointing the finger at their coworkers.

After Facebook announced financial results for the second quarter of 2018 that failed to meet Wall Street's expectations, its share price dropped by around 20%. Many employees of the California social network, who are partially paid in stock, took to anonymous social network Blind to vent.

One theme that came up is that some felt the quality of Facebook's hires had slipped, contributing to the problem the company faced.

One Facebook employee criticised their employer for hiring at an "ungodly" pace, and suggested that some of the new hires were "bleh."

Blind requires users to sign up with their company email address to verify they work there, but beyond that, they remain anonymous. Users can create and reply to threads in various public forums and exclusive employee-only forums for particular companies.

Facebook declined to comment on the Blind posts.

'We are hiring at an ungodly pace'

The anonymous Facebook employee wrote: "Problem: We are hiring at an ungodly pace. With operating margin under 40% it only makes sense to slow down hiring, plus the quality of a lot of the new hires is bleh."

"Quantity doesn't equal quality and the talent pool is tapped out. Earnings are tanking because we are hiring people we don't even need. This is the problem and I don't know why others aren't really talking about it. It's frustrating.

They added: "Solution: 1.) Slow down hiring completely. 2.) Stop hiring people we do not need."

Facebook's headcount increased 47% year-on-year, according to its earnings report, to 30,275 as of June 30, 2018, and has previously said it is hiring rapidly in safety and security. The 30,000 number refers only to full-time Facebook employees, a spokesperson said, and the new safety hires include both contractors and Facebook employees.

Several other Facebookers chimed in in agreement. " THIS!" one replied. "Overhiring is definitely [an] issue," another added.

A third cited Facebook's recent closure of three small apps due to low usage as a step in the right direction. "Some of the dead wood is in the process of being removed: tbh, Hello, and Moves. Maybe that will help a tiny bit," they wrote.

And another questioned Mark Zuckerberg's recent sale of stock, insinuating something suspicious was going on. "Didn't Zuck dump a bunch of the stop a few days before the announcement? Convenient timing! lol." (In reality, Zuckerberg - like many other executives - has established automatic stock-sale programs in place, to avoid any appearance of insider trading.)

Just because employees are angry, doesn't mean they're right

Facebook's stock dropped after the company warned that its future revenue growth and profits would fall well short of what investors were expecting, and the company saw more than $100 billion in market value knocked off overnight - the largest single-company wipe-out in US history.

Facebook has said it is focusing on the long-term success of the company, and cited increased investment in security, a switch to less-monetized new formats, and currency headwinds as among the reasons for the disappointing results.

It's also worth noting that even with the 20% plunge in Facebook's share price, the stock is still trading at the level it was a few months ago. Even so, some Facebook employees are clearly rushing to blame those who they believe to be responsible.

But another Blind user, identified as working for environmentally-focused finance firm Renew Finance, urged caution against taking employees' diagnoses of their company's ills as gospel.

"Hilarious to come on blind and watch overpaid tech geniuses get confused on how stocks work, how FB makes money, and more generally how all of finance works," they wrote. "Also for future reference employees of a company very rarely have a clue why stocks move."