The VP Who Asked to Be Demoted: A Masterclass in Self-Awareness

Speaker A: For Today's essential Heretics 101 feature, former Meta HR leader Cynthia Bazlamit Schroner talks about self demotion for fulfillment, Meta's pandemic hiring explosion, brutal layoffs, and DEI resource group chaos. All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another session of HR Heretics. Hope you are doing great. I'm so excited to have you on. So Cynthia Bazlamit Schroner. I didn't know what name to call her because we have Baz Lamitz. Baz. We have Shron or Shron. So I'm just going to stick with the OG Baz. And, like, this person is so well known, has done so much stuff and has seen it all, like, great stuff, total disasters and shit shows. But the best part, she, uh, wants to talk about it all. And it's just like, just like we do on this show, Nolan. We got nothing to lose. It's real talk, it's real stories, and we're going to pull it out of you. We're so excited to have you.

Speaker B: I'm excited to be here. I think everything is fair game because the only way you can make things better is share the things you screwed up and share the things you got right.

Speaker C: We're so stoked to have you on. So I want to start with the story you shared last week on LinkedIn. You shared a story at, uh, Meta about being demoted. Can you share that story with us?

Speaker B: I'd love to share the story with you. When I started at Facebook, it was about 300 people and we. It was incredible growth. It was 2008 and so fast forward a couple years and I had this large team and it was something I never thought I'd have. And I was loving. I was loving the team aspect of it. I hated the job. I really just loved the client work. And m. I'd go to my boss all the time, head of hr. She loved me because I had helped her for years and years. We'd always make clients do love loathe exercises. What do you love and you get your energy from? And what do you loathe and you hate? And I loathed so much of my job. I was like, laurie, here's my list. I hate this shit. I'm really bad at it. She's like, you're not bad at it. You could be better, but don't worry, you're great. And we did this dance for about two years. And she's like, well, Baz, you know, we've been talking for two years now about you hating Your job. I think it's now time to bring someone in over you. And I was like, are you firing me? And she's like, no, no, no. There's tons of growth here. There's tons of opportunity. We've got a bunch of other wrecks open. You could do what you love to do, which is really run tech. You love running tech. You don't love the business side or the sales side. And I sat there, and I was shocked. And I was like, don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Because, like, my heart was like, you know, crying, and my brain was like, hell, yeah. Hell, yeah. Finally. And they were not reconciling. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna walk away for a hot minute. And I went. I cried. And I had taken the shuttle in, so I couldn't even cry in my car. I had to, like, go cry at a conference room. I think I was in one of the breastfeeding rooms. It was so embarrassing. And I cried and called my husband. He goes, you've been wanting this, you dumbass. And I was like, no, no, no. I've been wanting this in my head. But my heart never caught up with my head. And so we started the search, and I hated all the people we saw. And then we meet this one woman, and I come out of the room, and I look at Lori, my boss, and Laurie's like, what do you think? I go, I'm not gonna say anything till you meet her. Lori comes out, and we just high five, and we jump up and down like she's the person she was way better than me at. Ah. All the parts of the job I sucked at, and it was like a weight was lifted. It was still embarrassing for a while. It was embarrassing. It took a couple months, but I knew it was the right thing. But when Lori dropped the hammer on me, I was like, for two years, you said I could fake it till I make it. Why me? And she's like, because it's time, and we now need it. And, yeah, I ended up figuring out what the trigger was for her finally. She never told me what finally turned her, because it wasn't Cheryl. Cheryl wanted me to stay in the job, but it was finally someone internally who had a ton of credibility, who's like, she's great, but she's hurting. The growth of the function and the whole function elevated with Janelle coming in, really did so. And it helped me realize what I love to do. And I just love going deep in a client group and spending at least 70% of my time with clients, then I could manage people. Then I can coach individuals and make teams better and all that shit. But if I didn't have 70% client

Speaker A: work, isn't it so good to know, like, what you want to do? Because a lot of us, I don't know about you both, but we go through our career, we're like, well, everything's the job. And no one really says, well, you know what? And I'll speak for myself. I don't like doing L and D stuff. I do not like training. I do not like facilitating large classrooms.

Speaker B: Like, and I.

Speaker A: Yet I did it for so long because you felt like you couldn't say you don't want to do it. And I just want to say this. I think now it is totally not taboo to do that. But you did it back when, you know, you didn't really do that.

Speaker C: These are classic, classic ego stories, right? Like, everybody wants to manage people until they do. Our ego is driving us to have a bigger title. Uh, a bigger paycheck, more notoriety, more followers on LinkedIn. When, like, once you actually get kind of comfortable with yourself, you can be honest about the things that you don't like. So, like, how did you go through that ego exercise, Baz? Because that. That thing is still hard. I think for most people, it got

Speaker B: easier because I actually demoted myself a second time a couple years later when I hired. When I hired Christine Ellis. For me, there was a cost to the time. Like, my mental health was taking a toll. And my parents. My parents, immigrants to the US and they're like, what is wrong with you? You know, you have no children. And they were yelling at me all the time, like, all you do is work. You look like. I was get. All my satisfaction in life was coming through work, neglecting friendships, neglecting families. It was just kind of lonely. Facebook, we really did support the. Lean into your strengths and do what you love. I'm an action person. I'm not, like, always the most strategic, and I love doing the work to solve the problems. What my job needs is more of what I don't have. Janelle was the person who could look out the two years, and that's what the firm needed because we were going hyper growth. So part of it was, and I know this sounds cheesy, I didn't want to let the team down. I don't want to let the company down. I loved Facebook. I was sucking that Kool Aid through that straw all day. So to me, it was like, company first, team first me second Tech then started ballooning and getting super big and I was like. And it started turning into that Janelle role. I was like, shit, it's happening again and I can't do that. And I've now already been here this long. I'm going to quit unless I can re scope a little more and get a little more focused. So I hired Christine Ellis and I told her this is the job that she declined me the first time. She said no. And uh, I was like, what the fuck? I'm offering you this beautiful job to run all of tech hr, repeat. And I would be one of your employees. I'm amazing. People would die to have me work for them. Are you like, I'm amazing? What's your problem? She said no to me. I was pissed. And I had just had my second kid at this point, so I called her back and I was like, you said no to me and you're coming because you're going to be my person now and we're going to make this happen. Uh, and she's like, okay, I'll come.

Speaker C: So what were the commonalities of the person that came in? What was true of those interviews and those experiences and then you reporting to those people that ultimately made it successful?

Speaker B: I would say they were both data leds. We had to take those learnings to make things better. They were also systems level thinkers. They were both the people who could sit there and be like, this is what's going to happen in two years. Which were both very opposite of what my strengths were. But then they want feedback from people. They weren't command and control leaders. High level of trust, high level of integrity. You couldn't get anything done at Meta, uh, Facebook unless you can work cross team collaboratively. That was the bread and butter. Both of them were about bringing people together. Every time I hired someone like that, I was making the team better, also by bringing in a different skill set. Because what I will say is what they were great at. I wasn't what I was great at. They were not. If you were going to throw someone in front of a client, you're going to throw me in front of the client because I can speak the language and I had the credibility there. But I couldn't figure out what HR needed to build for two years out. And it bugged me because for a while I was like, I'm gonna learn it. I'm gonna learn to be just like them. So I could be well rounded. Nope, I couldn't. Uh, and I mean, even if I could, which I bet You. I could have done like 50 to 70% of just drained me and uh, it just didn't feed my soul. And I already had all this. I was greedy. Why would I spend my time on this other shit that I. That didn't feed me when I could just be greedy and do the stuff that I love to do and I'm so great at and have a lot

Speaker A: of impact in the real talk about that is not everyone has the right to do that. I don't think you can actually do that unless you have performed immensely well, unless you are trusted and respected in an organization, unless you've made such great impact that people would do anything but let you leave.

Speaker B: I'll say part of it was, uh, part of it was I did perform well, but it was also because Meta was growing at 30% a year. Most companies aren't growing at a 30% percent of your clip. So we had the luxury of doing stuff like that and we had done it so many times with so many people that when it happened to me I was like, I've talked people through this and now it's happening to me. I gotta talk myself through it. But what I will say is, ever since I did that post, I've got a lot ofinbound on LinkedIn. Just people telling me, hey, I'm struggling with this as well. What do you think? Sometimes you can't do it at your own company or for me. I know people were talking about me. I used to be in meetings I didn't get to go to anymore.

Speaker C: It hurt.

Speaker B: The ego hurt a really, really. I have a big ego. I'm not gonna leave my ego at the door. Look at me, I got big hair, I got big ego. Gotta take it with me everywhere I go. And so. But then I realized the cost of my ego wasn't worth the cost of my happiness. I got a lot happier after that exercise. It just felt better.

Speaker C: That's. It's just like a case study in self awareness. And what's really, what's really interesting is by explaining to other people who are asking you about it, you're kind of like reaffirming it in your head, right? Because your ego is always chirping at you.

Speaker B: The comment on you just made about comparison, it. It kept happening to me even after I got demoted. I'd still see people get promoted. I'm like, that person's a dumbass. Talk about fake it till you make it. And they still haven't made it and you still promoted them so stuff like that would happen. Those inequities that still would eat away at me. And so it didn't just go away because I, my ego didn't miraculously go away because I still have a. I still now I don't even have to ferment anymore and I still know how awesome I am. So that part didn't go away. But that comparison killed people internally. I'd have engineers come to me and be like, baz, I started the same time that person did. How come he's a director now? How come she's a VP now? And I was like, but you're doing great at your job and you're super happy 80% of the time. They didn't want it. The only reason they thought they should is, is because they were doing the comparison thing. And it's so dangerous to do that because it does. That saying you just said is money. It does kill your joy.

Speaker A: Yes, it's, it's all I do now is try to connect what they're doing every day at this company with like joy in their lives. Because when those things are like, when those things are separate and for me they've been separate before, it gets real uncomfortable and it's not sustainable.

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Speaker C: I do want to talk about, you know, you left meta, what, 2023.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Okay, so 2021, 2022. Right. Tech was drunk on hiring well, and then you guys had to get sober really quick, right? And that looked like layoffs and a lot of layoffs. And it looked like a lot of shit talking in the community about your strategy. Right? Because it was like, oh, uh, like they don't care about people. You were there. What actually happened? Like, what's the internal narrative?

Speaker B: We were sloppy. Okay, so Covid hit and Mark's like, now more than ever, our tools have to help connect the world. So the first couple months of COVID from a work perspective, not a life perspective, from a work perspective were amazing. We were working longer hours. We were trying to bootstrap teams that would help MODPA stores around the world come online. So we set up all these free tools and this free software and like free ads credits to get them online. So that product, that team went from like 500 people to like 5,000 people. And I don't know a year, but we just kept iterating and couldn't find product market fit. And so then Mark's like, well, we need this for ads so ads can boost more revenue. And we WhatsApp, you need. You only have 500 engineers, you should have a thousand. So you could do 10 projects at once instead of two. So the exercises were always, give me a 20% plan, give me a 40% plan. What could those look like? And if you promised you could do all these things, you would get the headcount. It was like an arms race. We're doing too much. Because what we started to see on the HR BP side was too many redundancies, too many of the same teams popping up in different orgs. And we're like, why do we need this team here when we have it here? But no one was talking anymore. We were getting too big. And then Covid was over. During COVID everyone used Facebook. Our number shot up, and then Covid was over. People left their homes, usage shot down. No one was using it anymore. Our ad revenue went down. Coupled with Apple saying, you don't get to do ad targeting anymore. Our numbers just weren't doing well. And. And we have been saying for a while, we've got a fat middle. Like, we were too many layers, too many managers. So Mark sat down and he said, let's find efficiencies so they started asking HRBPs, what efficiencies do you need? And I was like, well in order to ship product, you actually don't need these two huge teams that are a thousand and three thousand people each. And Mark's like, okay, we're going to do a riff. And so Mark really was influenced a lot by Jan and Brian's focus. Lean teams, high quality teams, not a lot of managers. And so we shut down, I want to say like 8,000 reqs, rescinded a couple thousand offers and then just Rift. And let's be clear, some of the riff was needed because there were redundancy and roles. But also we were a company that was afraid of. And I'm just going to say it, they kept saying like, we don't want our Jason Damore moment. Google had their Jason Damore moment. They're like, we have to investigate everything. So if some rando came to me and said, hey, I'm being discriminated against, I'll be like, on what grounds? I don't know, I'm just being discriminated by who? Well maybe my boss kind of picking on me. I'm like, okay, it sounds like your boss is giving you feedback. But if the minute someone said discriminated against, I'd have to call the employee relations team and the investigators would come in and what should have been a normal like 2 month pip turned into an investigation in a year long process. And and so some of this was Mark just getting frustrated saying we're going to just do a uh, reckoning and just take things out and just move faster. And so we screwed up. We hired way too many people because it was an arms race. We just started getting inefficient, we started moving slower. And all of our engagement surveys said that he made the call. And I don't disagree with what he did. I think it was the right thing. I'm just pissed that we got there in the first place, we didn't have to get there.

Speaker C: And it's really easy to like especially from the outside to on Facebook meta like it's just they're huge company and so it's really easy to do that. But if you go back to that time and God forbid we like try and put ourselves into Mark's shoes. You're seeing like these numbers go up and you're thinking your constraint is just more people to build more products.

Speaker B: He had great intention when he was doing it.

Speaker C: Like exactly.

Speaker B: Like when we worked on that product, I just remember they would meet every morning at 8am and every night at 7pm These teams would meet and do these. And they were doing it because they wanted to bring mom pop businesses online. And Mark's like, we're gonna help them put food on the table. And you know, a lot of people say, baz, you drink the Kool Aid. I drank it. I believed it. The thing about Mark is he usually is the smartest person in the room. We were getting too big and it was crazy. And I would say the last, the year before the riff were like, this is a lot. Cause the recruiting team, some of those recruiters, you know what their like quarterly goal was. One hire because we need. We had like, it's ridiculous. We, uh, had like a 5,000 person recruiting team. But internally we knew we were getting a little bloated.

Speaker C: So then Baz, then the other piece of criticism is it wasn't just one riff. It was like three.

Speaker B: First one was recruiting and that was a big one because Mark wanted to show the board and people, look, we're actually going to do this once you rift recruiting. So then we cut the business. And the way we cut the business was what's priority work, what's not priority work? And we cut stuff that really people felt passionate about, like, you know, the social work and the DEI work. By then, every other company was doing it. And so many companies were idolizing the way Facebook did it because Mark actually wrote a post afterward and he's like, we didn't want to do, like this was an error. Like we screwed up. That's why we had to do this. These are awesome employees. I got calls from my friends at LinkedIn and calls from my friends at Google and calls from my friends at Amazon. Baz, tell me what you did it. Tell me what your process was to do it because we're going to copy it here. And so I think Mark felt a little motivated by that and said, we kind of went conservative the first time because we didn't want to cut too much. But then we came out the other end and we're like, we can actually afford to go leaner. And we reduced the number of managers. We kept senior ICs. That's really what we wanted, senior ICs. And so now that now they're hiring like crazy, a lot of the recruiters they laid off, they ended up rehiring back because now the company's doing so well. But it's funny now when I look at how Facebook is operating, killing all the dei, killing a lot of the internal community groups and Saying, get back to work. It's very WhatsApp. It's very. Not that WhatsApp was mean. WhatsApp was just focused.

Speaker C: I really appreciate you sharing the insights. The last thing I want to cover with you is just this, this notion of like, you know, this, the DEI stuff specifically you like can't fire people sometimes because you're worried about retribution and people actually know how to play the game, right? And then the other one is around the resource groups. And then if the resource group like wants you to focus on something and you guys don't focus on that thing, then all of a sudden you're like, you're some sort of like working against the resource group, which then can brand you in a negative light. What you're learning from that era.

Speaker B: Resource groups at Facebook originally started off as fun. A frisbee group, a knitting group, like so long as there were three of you, you guys get a fifteen hundred dollar budget a year to go play Frisbee. We want to build community. We want people to be happy and work with their co workers. And then it became more of a mission of we want to support black communities and Asian communities and women at communities. And frankly, those groups were actually quite helpful. What ended up happening is I remember this conversation with this one woman one time when George Floyd was happening and she was, she was a very seasoned leader. She's wonderful, very active in the black ad group. She's like, baz, I have a day job, yet I'm being asked to spend 30% of my time every week doing this. And first of all, it breaks my heart. It's very draining. And then we had this one group who were like, well, blue lives matter. And then we're spending all of our time policing this random 1% of the population instead of focusing on the 99% who care about these issues, but also just want to come to work to do great work. And it became a huge distraction. So for me it's, I, uh, think DEI plays a very, very, very important role in the workplace. And to me, those initiatives were really great initiatives and they really helped people. And we've got more better leaders now who are diverse than we would have before because we spent the time on it. But we could have done it in a way that was a little more targeted. Like we boiled the ocean at Facebook. We always boiled the ocean. Like, let's do everything to the hundredth percent degree. Or we could just do things to 90%, nail the things that really move the needle and then just focus on the work that's how I looked at it.

Speaker A: As a rational person, I don't know how you can go from zero to a hundred or a hundred to zero. I don't know how anyone can disagree with. It's really important. We need to do it. We need to make sure it's. It's productive. And it can spiral out of control and become completely distracting and just not helpful and actually backfire, you know, across the original intent. I just. I don't know how you can't see that both those things are true.

Speaker B: I think there's a couple of tried and true practices that work very well. Like the Rooney rule. Works incredibly well. Data proves over and over again. It does. And maybe more focus on empathy. I got calls from our ER team all the time who just triaged internal chat groups. Okay, Baz, this happened. This is your engineer. Go talk to him. I go. I'm not gonna fucking go talk to him. Tell him that stuff's not allowed. Set up better moderator rules so that we could eliminate a lot of this intervention. Like, make it about respect. And if you can't be respectful, you get kicked out of the group. If you can't be respectful of your co workers, you don't get to work at the company. Uh, it should be that basic.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, Baz, this is. I mean, we've. Kelly M. And I have been doing this for a couple years now. This is one of my favorite conversations we've ever had. Your level of candor is. Is, like, unmatched.

Speaker A: This was incredible. This was incredible. Bab, thank you for making the time.

Speaker B: Thanks for making me feel so comfortable. I really appreciate it. And thanks for having me on. That's been a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Thanks all.

Speaker C: That was a blast.

Speaker B: Thanks, guys.

Speaker C: HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine. The network behind Econ 102 Moment is Zen and Turpentine VC. Subscribe five stars. Share it on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasts. All the things.