Meta May 20 layoff: As ‘doomsday’ nears, anxious employees stock up on free snacks, charges; apply preemptively
As ‘apocalypse’ looms for some 8,000 Meta workers, who make up 10% of Facebook and Instagram’s global workforce, workers are reportedly stocking up on free snacks, drinks and chargers.
According to Reuters, Meta will carry out the first wave of layoffs planned for this year on May 20, with others to follow later.
Former Meta employee Adel Wu, who witnessed multiple layoffs during his final year at the tech firm, explained employee anxiety by commenting on the impending layoffs in a viral post.
“There were probably 4-5 layoffs during my last year at Meta, but this one on 5/20 is huge. My friends are still there either waiting in hopes of being laid off or extremely worried because the job is their lifeline,” X said in the post.
“I remember the first big layoff the night before was almost apocalypse-like, people were filling their bags with free snacks, drinks and chargers,” he added. “It’s a very strange time to be in big tech.”
Meta’s layoffs this year will be its most significant since the social media giant’s restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023, which it called a “year of productivity” in which it cut nearly 21,000 jobs.
The company is in a more comfortable financial position this time around, but executives envision a future with fewer layers of management and greater efficiency enabled by AI-powered workers.
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A Software Engineer who graduated last year and completed five internships said in a separate post on social media that they have been at Meta for almost a year.
“I was not a returning intern. None of my internships were in FAANG or FAANG+. I also received new grad offers from Robinhood, Amazon, Capital One last year, and a return offer from one of my internships,” the technician said.
Unsure of a future at Meta following the May 20 layoffs, the Software Engineer began applying for jobs in advance “just in case” and “has now applied for approximately 250 entry-level jobs for both large and small companies in every industry.”
But the technician said, “I’ve been getting ZERO interviews since I added Meta to my resume and removed my college projects.” – “Either just ghosted or rejected for no reason (which is pretty typical to be fair).”
The technician noted that in 2025, they came and interviewed Meta, “where I received offers from the companies I mentioned and of course, where I am currently working.”
He’s a technologist at Meta, working on code in Python with PyTorch developer tools and C++, and said: “Claude does most of the actual coding these days, despite the company’s recent internal push to be AI native starting in H1 2026.”
“I don’t think this is our core product by any means,” Techei wrote. “I’m not on FB/IG’s advertising or product team, but I also feel like I’m not just the standard full-stack engineer. My work goes deeper than that and is more specialized in PyTorch’s internals.”
“Perhaps this is seen as too special or too unimportant because it is not as visible as work on a core product and does not work on a currency printing press,” the post said.
Severance pay package
According to media reports, the benefits package for US employees includes a basic severance pay equivalent to 16 weeks’ salary, as well as a two-week service-based bonus for each year worked.
In addition, employees are provided with health insurance consisting of paid benefits for 18 months. The average savings per job associated with this is approximately $375,000.
Employees described the severance package as unexpectedly generous and called it a “golden parachute” as the tech firm tried to cushion the blow with 18 months of health insurance coverage.
“We organize the teams so that they are no larger than necessary.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the layoffs.
