You CAN NOT attract top tier talent easily to a dumpster fire and they know this. You can't be giving away free food, ice cream, no performance reviews for two years during the pandemic and shipping 10s of thousands of office equipment to each individual employees homes for two years during the pandemic, continue to approve aggressive hiring plans and laying out $10 Billion dollar outlays for the fucking Metaverse and then turn around and say to the employees you hired that "You guys suck"
I would just call it childish, but this asshole deserves no benefit of doubt. It's downright disgusting.
People change, employ motivation levels wane, especially when a chunk of your employees are millionaires. Lots of folks who want to rest and vest- this announcement is aimed at getting those people to fire back up to higher productivity, or to take a different job they are passionate about.
In virtually every instance, Meta proffered the employment contract and its provisions, vetted the counter party, and gave assent to enter into contract.
Arguably, “there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here,” and their intent to “turn up the heat,” represents a failure of Meta to conduct proper due diligence when entering into contract, and a modification of the provisions of employment after-the-fact.
In most instances these would be considered organizational failures. Your reference to the business cycle and other delicate economic terms are not the explanatory variables, not even to Meta themselves.