Meta has confirmed it will cut roughly 10 percent of its global workforce, approximately 8,000 employees, effective May 20. The reaction inside the company was immediate, raw and deeply personal. Across anonymous workplace platform Blind, colleagues asked one another how they were supposed to work, stay motivated and face the uncertainty of not knowing whether they would still have a job in less than a month.
The layoffs, disclosed in a memo sent to employees, will come on May 20. Meta also will not hire workers for 6,000 open roles it had intended to fill.
'28 days of hell'
The mood on Blind, where tech workers post candidly under the cover of anonymity, turned quickly from shock to gallows humour to genuine anguish. One employee aptly called the wait as, "28 days of hell."
"How are you motivating yourself to work for the next one month with layoffs confirmed?" one Meta employee posted. A reply captured the sentiment of many, "I'm motivating myself to do stuff that I can put on my resume for my next job. Lol."
Another post reflected deeper frustration at colleagues who had recently joined the company despite its well-documented instability: "People with families and stable jobs, why are you joining Meta? I am beyond annoyed at this level of irresponsibility. I have a co-worker join. He has two kids and had a stable or strong situation at his previous job. Now he is in literal hell at Meta. Might even lose his job this round. And even if he survives this round, how many more rounds can he survive? My question is why would you join Meta at this point in time when it's incredibly difficult to work there and just pure unstable."
'Unwelcome news'
In the memo, Meta's Chief People Officer Janelle Gale wrote, "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making. This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here."
Calling it "unwelcome news," Gale wrote that confirming the layoffs to employees now "is the best path forward, given the circumstances." Currently, everyone at Meta is unsure of their fate until May 20, when Meta says it will notify affected employees.
The layoffs will come with a severance package for those in the US, which includes '16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year of employment.' Employees outside the US will receive severance packages depending on their country. A notable detail is that while all affected employees will be notified on the same day, their individual last days of work will differ.
