Wednesday morning was full of uncertainty for thousands of Meta employees as layoff emails began circulating from around 4 am PT, according to latest reports. By the end of the day, around 8,000 employees, nearly 10% of Meta's global workforce, had lost their jobs. The company is also shutting down about 6,000 open roles as it pushes harder into artificial intelligence. Employees in Singapore were among the first to receive termination notices, with some informed as early as 4 am local time, followed by updates to staff in Europe and the United States in phased waves. The cuts are expected to hit engineering and product divisions particularly hard, while Meta plans to move around 7,000 employees into AI-focused teams and reduce layers of management. As part of the restructuring, Meta also plans to move more than 7,000 people to work on new initiatives around AI, with leaders telling staff they are not ruling out further job cuts.
A Meta employee who survived the company's recent mass layoffs has sparked widespread conversation about survivor's guilt after posting an emotional message on the anonymous workplace forum Teamblind. The employee wrote a post titled 'I feel bad for surviving' expressing remorse over keeping their job while hard-working colleagues were let go. The employee described themselves as an average-performing scrub and expressed feelings of guilt for surviving while their teammate was laid off. The post has resonated with thousands of tech workers who are navigating similar situations, creating a broader discussion about the arbitrary nature of corporate restructuring decisions. One user summed up the situation, saying 'Survivor's guilt is real and what you are feeling says a lot about the kind of person you are. The hardest truth about these layoffs is that they are rarely about individual performance and more about org structure, team priorities and budget decisions made by people who never even looked at her commit history.'
The emotional impact extends beyond simple relief for those who survived the cuts. One Meta employee on Blind shared a very personal note of guilt and shock, stating they feel bad for surviving while a teammate was let go. The employee described their teammate as 'super humble and reliable' and expressed feelings of guilt for surviving while their teammate was laid off. The teammate had worked relentlessly on a project with a tight deadline, regularly sleeping less than 4 hours for months, with the employee noting they 'think she fell sick many times due to overwork and now she suddenly got cut.' The teammate had a strong track record, handled important projects and had no performance warnings, making the decision even harder to understand. The employee questioned why someone with a strong track record and good performance ratings was impacted, especially someone they felt was consistently dependable and well-behaved at work. The post quickly resonated with current and former tech workers, with one user writing 'These cuts are random. We lost some best people too. Don't be too hard on yourself.'
Another Meta employee on an H-1B visa described growing anxiety ahead of the layoffs, joining the company just a year ago and already feeling they may be affected. The employee, working in Data Engineering with over five years of experience, wrote that they have already started applying externally but are struggling to find responses in a 'very rough market'. They raised multiple concerns about H-1B workers during layoffs, including how the 60-day grace period is calculated, whether it starts from the official layoff date or last payroll date, backup visa options to stay in the US, and which companies are still hiring and willing to sponsor transfers. The employee noted they are receiving 'no callbacks, all rejections, and not many openings compared to what I expected' and pointed out how hard it is to find companies willing to take over H-1B sponsorship.
According to experts, the psychological impact of these layoffs extends far beyond the immediate cuts. Leonard Boussioux, assistant professor of information systems at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, explains that 'There is this survivors' feeling sometimes that brings some guilt to the employees that were not laid off, thinking that my friends have been laid off and I haven't.' The problem compounds when the threat of further cuts hangs in the air, as it does at Meta, which has signaled that this round may not be the last. Eva Johnson, Sr. Director Analyst and HR Advisor at Gartner, notes that 'When it finally does happen, it is really very demoralizing and demotivating to the employees to just receive an email to say, this is what's happening with your job.' The cuts are creating 'PTSD and not sure what's going to happen next' among remaining employees, who are 'not focused on their productivity' and instead 'focused on what's going to happen to me, and is this going to happen to me.'
