In the months leading up to Meta’s decision on Wednesday to lay off 11,000 employees, or about 13 percent of its workforce, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top generals repeatedly made it clear that at least some of the company’s problems company were related to the personal failings of its employees. “Realistically, there are probably a lot of people in the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg told his own employees at a company meeting in June.

Next month, Responsible for engineering and remote presence of MetaMaher Saba told managers to identify and weed out those who were not doing their part.

“If a direct report is stagnating or underperforming, that’s not what we need; they are failing this company,” Saba said.

In both cases, what was not said was that much of…