Meta Staff Describe Uncertainty and Anxiety on Eve of Job Cuts

Workers are allegedly stocking up on free snacks, drinks, and chargers as 8,000 Meta employees—equivalent to 10% of Facebook and Instagram's global workforce—face what amounts to a near-certain doomsday. Meta has scheduled layoffs for the first wave of employees for May 20th, with additional layoffs to follow. Anxieties over impending layoffs were expressed by Adel Wu, a former employee of Meta who saw multiple rounds of layoffs in her final year at the tech company.

“During my last year at meta there were probably 4-5 layoffs, but this one on 5/20 is huuuge. my friends still there are either just waiting hoping to get laid off or extremely anxious because the job is their lifeline,” she said in an X post.

Meta is on a Spree of Layoffs

Downsizing 11,000 positions was the first major layoff at the Mark Zuckerberg-led company in 2022. The initial round was a result of the company's heavy investment in the Metaverse project, which ultimately failed. The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and the heavy investment in automation led to multiple rounds of layoffs in the years that followed.

Now that everything has worked out financially, the company can relax. Executives, on the other hand, see a future where AI-assisted workers are more efficient and there are fewer layers of management. Another social media post revealed that a software engineer who received five internships after graduating last year has been working at Meta for nearly a year. After the 20 May layoffs, the software engineers at Meta weren't sure what their future held, so they started applying for jobs ahead of time. Their application pool also includes 250+ entry-level positions across all industries, from large corporations to mom-and-pop shops.

What Exiting Employees will Receive?

A base severance pay equal to sixteen weeks of salary is reportedly part of the benefits package for US employees. In addition, for every year of employment, the company will give a bonus equal to two weeks' salary. Furthermore, workers are eligible for paid health coverage for a period of 18 months. This results in an average savings of about $375,000 per job.

The severance package was characterised by employees as surprisingly generous. They called it a "golden parachute" because the tech company is trying to make up for it with 18 months of health insurance. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the layoffs, saying, "We are streamlining teams so they are not bigger than needed."