D-Day For "Huuuge" Meta Layoffs Looms As AI Job Apocalypse Accelerates
'D-Day' for Meta layoffs is quickly approaching, as the Facebook and Instagram owner will slash 10% of its global headcount - or about 8,000 employees - in the initial round as it swaps headcount for GPUs.
Former Meta employee Adel Wu described the current situation on X, saying her millennial and Gen Z friends still at the tech company are currently "either just waiting, hoping to get laid off or extremely anxious because the job is their lifeline."
Welcome to the accelerating AI job apocalypse, affecting white-collar youngsters with lots of student debt.
Wu described the upcoming Wednesday layoff announcement as "huuge" and noted, "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."
during my last year at meta there were probably 4-5 layoffs, but this one on 5/20 is huuuge
— adel 🌟 (@adelwu_) May 16, 2026
my friends still there are either just waiting hoping to get laid off or extremely anxious because the job is their lifeline
i remember the very first big layoff the night before was… https://t.co/3fhVNzQjGn
Wu's X post quoted Emily Dreyfuss of The San Francisco Standard, who provided additional color in a note about the incoming layoffs:
Next week, Meta is expected to lay off 8,000 employees(opens in new tab), roughly 10% of its global workforce, with about 500 of those cuts landing in the Bay Area.
They will join a worldwide tally of more than 100,000 tech workers laid off since January, with more on the horizon.
At Meta, employees are anxiously anticipating a 7 a.m. email Wednesday that will tell them their fate.
To these rank-and-file workers, the AI job apocalypse feels like it's already here. And even as they fear their own replacement, they are being asked by management to use and train the very products that will soon take their jobs.
Dreyfuss quoted an anonymous Meta employee who said, "This is as anxious and stressed as I have ever been at a job."
"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," the employee told Dreyfuss.
We previewed the coming job apocalypse for Meta in recent weeks:
- Meta Plans 20% Layoffs To Divert Capital To Data Centers
- Meta To Unleash First Wave Of Mass Layoffs May 20 As It Eliminates 10% Of Its Workers
... and this comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI as he seeks to dramatically reshape his company's core business around AI after Metaverse failures.
Meta is not alone: Amazon recently trimmed 30,000 corporate employees, representing nearly 10% of its white-collar workers. In February, the fintech company Block fired nearly half of its staff.
Layoffs. fyi, a website tracking tech job cuts worldwide, reported that 73,212 employees have lost their jobs so far this year. For all of 2024, the figure was 153,000.
Goldman laid out in 2023 just how many jobs AI will take. That number is absolutely scary for white-collar America, where many are saturated with student debt.