As ‘doomsday’ nears for as many as 8,000 Meta employees, 10% of the global employees of Facebook and Instagram, workers are reportedly stocking up on free snacks, drinks and chargers.
Meta will conduct its first wave of layoffs planned for this year on 20 May, with more coming later, according to a Reuters report.
In a viral post, Adel Wu, a former Meta employee who witnessed several rounds of layoffs during her last year at the tech firm, commented on the upcoming layoffs, explaining employees’ anxiety.
“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.
“I remember the very first big the night before was almost like doomsday, people were stuffing their bags with free snacks and drinks and chargers,” she added. “Very weird time to be in big tech.”
Meta’s layoffs this year will be the social media giant’s most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023, dubbed the “year of efficiency,” when it eliminated about 21,000 jobs.
The company is in a more comfortable financial position this time, but executives envision a future with fewer management layers and greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
Adding Meta to resume killing opportunities? Techie says…
In a separate social media post, a software engineer who graduated last year and bagged five internships said that they have been at Meta for almost a year.
“I was not a returning intern. None of my internships was at FAANG or FAANG+. I also had new grad offers last year from Robinhood, , Capital One, and a return offer from one of my internships,” the techie said.
Unsure of a future at Meta after the 20 May layoffs, the software engineer began to preemptively apply to jobs “just in case,” and has “applied to 250 entry-level jobs or so now, for both big and small companies in every sector.”
However, the techie added, “Ever since adding Meta on my resume and removing my university projects, I am getting ZERO interviews.” — “Either just ghosted or rejected with no reason given (which is pretty typical to be fair).”
The techie shared that in 2025, they landed and passed interviews with “those companies which I mentioned I had offers from, and of course Meta where I am now.”
At Meta, the techie works on PyTorch developer tooling and code in C++ and Python, and said, “ is doing a lot of the actual coding nowadays, though with the company’s recent internal push starting 2026 H1 to be AI native.”
“I feel like this isn’t our core product by any means,” the techei wrote. “Like I’m not on ads or a product team for FB/IG, but I also feel like I’m not just the standard full-stack engineer. My work goes deeper than that and is more specialised around PyTorch internals.”
“So maybe this is seen as too niche or too unimportant since it’s not as visible as work on a core product and it’s not work on a money printer,” the post read.
The severance package
According to media reports, the benefits package for US employees includes a base severance pay equivalent to 16 weeks of salary, as well as a service-based bonus of two weeks of salary for each year of employment.
Additionally, employees receive 18 months of paid health coverage. The average per-job savings associated with this is approximately $375,000.
Employees have described the severance package as unexpectedly generous, calling it a “golden parachute” as the tech firm tries to soften the blow with 18 months of healthcare coverage.
“We are streamlining teams so they are not bigger than needed,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said about the layoffs.