With thousands of Meta employees being laid off on May 20, social media is awash with anxious posts with dark humor as they wait to find out who will be out of a job.
In a memo sent to employees Thursday, Meta said it shared some details of the layoffs earlier than usual because the news had already leaked. The company plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce and close 6,000 open positions next month.
“I know this will leave everyone with almost a month of uncertainty, which is incredibly troubling,” wrote Meta HR director Janelle Gale.
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What are Meta employees saying?
Welcome to “28 Days of Hell,” wrote an employee in a thread posted on the anonymous job app Blind in the Meta staff-only section – “How do you motivate yourself to work for another 1 month with a confirmed layoff?”
“Motivating myself to do things I can put on my resume for my next job lol,” another employee wrote.
The employee wrote that he had to wait almost a month to find out who was causing the anxiety. The person who shared that this was their first week with the company wrote: “Maybe it’s goodbye for me”.
Official confirmation of the layoffs has given some Met employees a sense of relief. After weeks of intense internal speculation, the formal announcement finally ended the uncertainty, according to a Business Insider report citing an anonymous source.
Among the top reactions to Gale’s internal post was a picture of an elephant in reference to a clear nod to management finally “addressing the elephant in the room.” Since Reuters first reported the planned layoffs in March, employees have spent weeks speculating about the true extent of the cuts.
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“Addressed elephant!” another employee commented. “Addressed to: “ELEPHANT”: Another posted an image of an envelope with the inscription.
Another employee told Business Insider that the announcement has increased the pressure on them to deliver because it’s unknown which teams will be affected by the cuts – “I’m a bit stressed about how to make an impact in the next month”.
Although the pressure has increased, this is not the employee’s first experience with layoffs at the company. Staff adopted a “business as usual” approach and said they were preparing for the worst as they navigated the month-long wait for further updates.
“I guess I’m always two months away from being fired, regardless of what management says, so I’ll continue to operate as usual,” the employee said.
Another employee asked if travel would be restricted the week of May 20. “We are not restricting travel across the company. Vice presidents will share team-specific guidelines,” Gale replied.
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“I feel more anxiety about survival”
Some users have asked why Meta can’t offer voluntary buyouts like Microsoft and Google. Many of the posts were from users asking others for information on which groups might be affected.
In a longer post, one user said the downside could be surviving the cuts: “I feel more concerned about surviving this layoff.”
The user recalled several rounds of layoffs at the company starting in 2022, saying, “Because we all know it’s going to get worse for those of us left behind and having to absorb even more work, among other declining factors in this sad horrible company.”
