'I feel torn, cry in the shower': Meta employee reveals reality of working at tech giant amid looming mass layoffs

There was a time in the world when having a tech job meant one was settled for life. The money, the time, the comfort, the luxury and the status, all were accompanied by an offer letter from the biggies of tech. However, with the AI boom, the industry that once attracted millions is laying off thousands like a snake shedding its skin throughout the year.On May 20, 2026, Meta is expected to lay off 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its global workforce with about 500 cuts landing in the Bay Area. This number joined the 100,000 tech workers laid off since January. Currently, every employee at Mark Zuckerberg's workspace is awaiting a 7 am email that will reveal their future. “If you’re on a work machine, you are probably being surveilled. But the framing that we are using this to train AI to do everyone’s job and the sort of unapologetic, ‘we’re training your replacement, and we’re not paying you more for it’ approach is just another signal of how little Meta cares about the humans that it employs,” said a longtime employee at Meta who wanted to remain anonymous, to The Standard.Gone is the time when being laid off meant an awkward meeting with HR and your manager. It seems everything is cutthroat at Meta. According to the employee, there is never an official internal list provided of who is being laid off. People find out by visiting their internal work profile and seeing if it says "deactivated."With the looming layoff date announced, the employee shared how they checked their email every morning to know if they still have a job or not."I feel torn. Working here is not easy. From the outside, there’s massive negative sentiment, and there’s certainly something there. But the pain of working here is not very well understood," they said about the current work environment.With everyone on the radar, it seems people are taking the witty way forward. “There’s a lot of doomsday joking going around. Very openly in [chat] groups that include directors and even VPs, people are posting memes about getting laid off, dancing skeletons, these kinds of things,” they said.However, at the same time, with the leadership avoiding addressing the situation, the lack of compassion and the expectation to take layoffs as “adults” is impacting the employee morale and trust in the company along with the productivity.The employee highlighted that in the grand scheme, things are more complicated than they seem. With the current situation in the tech industry, employees remain unaware of how long it would take to find a new job. While six months was enough earlier, now, one can never estimate a period as it could also mean a year or more. “My partner is home with our kids, so I’m currently the breadwinner, and it’s pretty intimidating to think that might disappear,” they said.That is the professional front. Personally, layoffs take a toll on a lot more than finances. They impact a person’s self-confidence, mental health and entire life. “I tend to cry in the shower,” shared the employee while adding that they still put on a brave face in the office. “But when I’m at home, if I have breaks where I might normally have had a lovely lunch in the sun, I definitely spend a good amount of that time sort of despondent somewhere in my house.”They shared that they are dissatisfied with the leadership and angry that they still have to be productive in the situation. Moreover, larger life seems to have come to a stop. The employee has delayed all life decisions like moving or having another kid to until after May 20. However, with rumours of more layoffs, it seems all they can do is keep their head down and keep working while putting living life stress-free on a back-burner dream.Thus, more and more people are taking mental health leaves that have become “reasonably common at Meta.”When asked about something people understood about working at Meta at the moment, the employee said he wanted people to know the “pain” of working there. “The tradeoffs. A moment like this, where not only is some of the work maybe not great for society, but also we’re not being treated like humans, and as a manager, not really being allowed to treat my people that much like humans. The pay is good. It’s hard to have a clear feeling about anything else,” they said.“Even if we haven’t lost our jobs to AI yet, we’re being commoditised in advance,” they added.Will they stay at Meta if not laid off? Well, with the conditions being “pretty terrible”, the employee said they want to look for another role while hopefully still being employed. “It is too distracting and impossible to plan my own life. Yeah ... can’t do it,” they shared.