A former Meta employee has revealed that workers at the tech giant stuffed their bags with free goodies on the eve of the company’s first major layoff, describing the atmosphere inside the company as “almost like doomsday”. Adel Wu, who said she witnessed multiple rounds of layoffs during her final year at Meta, shared a post on X recalling the tense environment that gripped employees before one particularly large round of job cuts.
Her post comes shortly before Meta is all set to cut 8,000 jobs on May 20. Wu implied that little has changed since 2021 when it comes to the tense atmosphere preceding layoffs at Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
Meta’s first layoff
Meta cut 11,000 jobs in 2022 — the first in the company’s 18-year history. The 2022 layoffs were attributed to Meta sinking more money into its doomed Metaverse project. Several other rounds of layoffs followed the 2022 round, thanks to the AI boom and aggressive investment in automation.
In her X post, Wu said that she witnessed several layoffs during her last year at Meta. “During my last year at Meta there were probably 4-5 layoffs, but this one on 5/20 is huuuge,” she wrote, referring to the May 20 date when Meta will announce who has been made redundant.
Wu said that her friends at Meta are extremely anxious about their future with the company. “My friends still there are either just waiting hoping to get laid off or extremely anxious because the job is their lifeline,” she said.
“I remember the very first big layoff the night before was almost like doomsday, people were stuffing their bags with free snacks and drinks and chargers,” Wu recalled.
She ended her post by calling it a “very weird time to be in big tech”.
‘A lot of anxiety’
“I’ve been here for every round of layoffs, I don’t think this one is worse than the first two years but there is definitely a lot of anxiety and resentment in the company. I miss 2021 so much lol,” claimed one person in the comments section.
“Haha I remember waking up at like 3am PT to sit and stare at my inbox for the email of doom. Trauma bonding. Makes for a crazy story to tell in the future,” another recalled.
Many agreed that morale is at an all time low in the IT industry. (Also read: ‘Dead scared to take a loan’: Hyderabad techie says IT jobs no longer feel secure amid layoffs)
“The first lay off was wild, someone on my team was literally laid off mid-business trip, but also knowing that there were like 3 -5 more rounds of layoffs just killed off any morale I had, and I was definitely in the camp of hoping to get laid off,” a user said.
