• After months of uncertainty, a Meta data scientist said she felt a sense of relief upon getting laid off.
• Moyan Chen said the loss of her job made her question what she wanted to do next.
• She's considering AI startups, seeing more risk in traditional data roles at big companies.

Moyan Chen was laid off from her role as a data scientist at Meta in May after just under a year on the job. The 24-year-old, who lives in New York City, isn't sure what she wants to do next. Business Insider has verified her identity and former employment. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

When the rumor of layoffs at Meta leaked in March, there was no timeline. Some of my colleagues and I were fearing Wednesdays because Meta has sometimes laid off people on those days. So, every Tuesday night, when I left work, I wondered if I would be coming back.

On Wednesday mornings, I would wake up early to check my email. That lasted for a month, until April, when there was a date for the layoffs: May 20. When the day finally came, and I got laid off, I was like, "This is it." It was more like relief than pain.

I feel like, ultimately, I lost my job to AI.

A lot of my coworkers were also impacted, and they're trying to find jobs. They are making posts on LinkedIn and asking for new opportunities. It feels like we are all sailing on the sea, and Meta is a huge ship that's moving very fast. When the AI storm comes, is your next move to jump to a smaller, slower ship?

Some people I worked with were saying it's better to find a job in finance because it takes longer for them to adopt AI. But ultimately, is the same thing going to happen to you?

A switch in my career path

After I got laid off, I wasn't that nervous, because I'm single and have no family in the US. My parents have been wanting me to go back to China anyway. That's the worst-case scenario because I love the US and the energy of New York City.

I don't know if I plan to find another job at a big company. I have interned at three of them, and now I don't want to climb the corporate ladder. I used to wonder, "How am I going to feed myself if I don't work for a big company?" That's why I didn't resign from Meta. I kept working, and I worked hard.

Now I feel like it's not safe anymore, like I can get laid off at any time. Meta has been very generous with severance, so I have a couple of months to figure out what I'll do next.

I don't think this layoff is a bad thing for me. It's more like a switch in my career path. It's making me see that I could live a different life, and it's probably better than the corporate life.

I'm still in a transition period and don't have all the answers. Seeing how AI is changing things, it makes me rethink the type of job I might want. I've started creating content online to document my career journey and what I'm learning about AI. I'm also interested in exploring career coaching to help people who are experiencing this transition brought about by this new technology.

The longer-term risk

Whatever I end up doing, I expect AI will have an impact. At Meta, I was a data scientist working on Instagram. For that kind of job, the more repetitive tasks are definitely going away. So, writing queries and spending time creating visualizations — these things have already been replaced by AI in Big Tech.

If you only know how to code, that's not enough. If you're just writing SQL queries, using Python, or tracking and analyzing metrics, it's not a very promising career anymore. There will still be a role called "data scientist," but they will need to know more about other functions. There is this emerging trend that requires us to have broader skills and knowledge because of AI.

It got to the point where I wouldn't check AI-generated queries because they have gotten so accurate. I thought that if AI made a mistake on a specific task, I would make 10. For big, ambiguous projects, AI would still make a lot of mistakes, but for specific tasks, it was super accurate. It's very much like a talented individual contributor.

I'm less interested in AI as a stand-alone technology and more interested in how it changes the way people work and build products. If I come across a team that aligns with my interests and values, I would seriously consider joining an AI startup.

Those companies can be risky, but staying at a big company doing traditional data analytics and reporting jobs just feels like I will be left behind. That's riskier in the long term.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• Meta told staff on Thursday that it planned to eliminate 10% of its workforce.
• Inside the company, employees are bracing for weeks of limbo as they wait to find out who will be cut.
• Meta employees responded internally with a mixture of questions, concerns, and jokes.

Welcome to "28 days of hell."

That's how one Meta employee characterized the tech giant's announcement that thousands of jobs will be cut on May 20. Employees flooded internal forums with similar posts, many of which were filled with anxiety, dark humor, and questions as they wait to learn who will be out of a job.

"How are you motivating yourself to work for the next 1 month with layoffs confirmed?" one person posted on the anonymous workplace app Blind, in a section just for Meta employees.

Someone else replied, "I'm motivating myself to do stuff that I can put on my resume for my next job lol."

In a memo sent to staff on Thursday, Meta said it shared some layoff details earlier than usual because the news had already leaked. The company plans to cut around 10% of employees next month and close 6,000 open roles.

"I know this leaves everyone with nearly a month of ambiguity, which is incredibly unsettling," wrote Meta's chief people officer Janelle Gale.

For some Meta employees, the fact that company leadership acknowledged layoffs brought some relief. The layoffs had been so widely discussed internally that the announcement helped ease some uncertainty, according to one employee who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

One of the top comments under Gale's internal Meta post was a picture of an elephant, a reference to leadership addressing the elephant in the room. Reuters first reported Meta was planning sweeping layoffs in March, and employees have been speculating on the extent of the cuts in the weeks since.

"elephant addressed!" commented another employee. Another posted a picture of an envelope that read: "Addressed to: "ELEPHANT."

Others said that having to wait almost a month to find out who would be affected created anxiety. One person posted that this was their first week at the company. "It might be goodbye for me," they wrote.

Another employee told Business Insider that the announcement added pressure for them to deliver results over the next month because it's unknown which teams will be affected by the cuts.

"I'm a little stressed about making impact in the next month," they said.

Despite a sense of added pressure, it's not the employee's first go-around with cuts at the company. The worker said they're going to continue working as usual, assuming the worst while trying to make the most of the next month as they wait for further updates.

"I assume I'm always two months away from being laid off, no matter what leadership says, so I'm going to continue to operate as usual," the employee said.

Employees also commented on Gale's internal post with questions.

One person asked if Meta staff would receive their August 15 stock payouts, which are part of some employees' compensation packages. Gale said that impacted employees would have a termination date prior to the August vest and would therefore not receive it.

"Because of the timing of the notifications, we will have just had the May 15 vest. There are some instances, based on work location, where people will remain employed through the August 15 vest," Gale wrote. Another employee thanked Gale for the clarification.

Another employee asked if travel would be restricted the week of May 20. "We are not restricting travel company-wide. VPs will share team-specific guidance," Gale responded.

'I feel more anxious about surviving'

On the Meta employee section of Blind, some users asked why Meta couldn't offer voluntary buyouts. Microsoft on Thursday offered one-time early retirement buyouts to thousands of its long-time employees, and Google has extended the same offers to staff across some orgs.

Many posts were from users asking others for information about which groups might be affected.

In a longer post, one user said the downside might be surviving the cuts.

"I feel more anxious about surviving this layoff," they wrote, recalling several rounds of layoffs at the company since 2022.

"Because we all know it's just gonna get worse for those of us who are left behind and have to absorb even more work, amongst other declining factors in this sad fearful company," they wrote.

• Tejal Rives hoped adopting AI at work would help keep her safe from tech layoffs.
• However, she lost her job at Amazon during layoffs in October 2025.
• Rives was disheartened but was glad the experience taught her about AI.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tejal Rives, 35, who lives in Arizona. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In October 2025, I read a news article that Amazon was planning to cut jobs. I'd survived other layoffs, but this time my gut told me I'd be affected. Sure enough, not long after, I received an email that my position as a product marketer was being eliminated.

I was one of 14,000 people impacted, and even though I understood the decision wasn't personal, it was very disheartening. I thought up-skilling in AI would make me safer from layoffs, but even though it didn't, I still think professionals should focus on learning this one important AI skill: prompt engineering.

I thought working on AI could safeguard my job

At the time of the October layoffs, there was debate around whether AI was the reason.

The company was encouraging us to use AI at the time, but I don't think it took my job. I wrote descriptions for internal products at Amazon, and when I used AI to help, I'd need to ask it to rewrite its output without fluff words. It didn't sound like how people talk. Despite my ethical qualms, I used AI, but, in my opinion, it was nowhere close to replacing my role.

Before I was laid off, I helped build an internal site for Amazon using AI. I hadn't really coded before, but with a colleague's help, I learned how to vibe code with a lot of trial and error.

I thought using AI for this project and showcasing different skills would make me more valuable to the company, but in the end, it didn't keep me from being laid off.

Initially, I felt like I'd wasted time by learning something I likely wouldn't use again, but overall, I don't think my efforts were wasted. The most important thing the experience taught me was prompt engineering, the practice of asking AI the right questions. I want to be minimal with my use of AI for ethical reasons, including around the water resources needed to power data centers. Efficient prompt engineering helps me ask AI my question once, without needing to clarify three or more times.

I'd highly recommend that other professionals learn prompt engineering to up-skill themselves in the age of AI.

The workforce has shifted, and you're likely going to need to learn AI and use it at your job, regardless of your moral qualms. We need to up-skill to survive.

I have my own business, and use AI very rarely

My husband and I already agreed that if I were laid off, I'd focus on being the primary parent to our child as well as on my career coaching business, called Do My Resume LLC, which I was running on the side of my Amazon job. Before being laid off, I planned to eventually quit my job and focus on it full-time.

I didn't realize how burnt out I was after four years at Amazon, though, and it took me a while to pivot into working on my business. For roughly three weeks, I didn't touch my computer. I took up sewing and house-cleaning projects because I needed separation from my screen.

Now, my life is slower than it was at Amazon. I spend roughly four hours a day, six days a week, on the business, and spend the rest of my time taking care of the house and my family.

The business provides career coaching and résumé-writing services, but we don't use AI to write résumés, because it's humans who read them. Recently, I used AI to give me advice about starting a YouTube series for my business, so I will use this technology to help me flesh out ideas, but very rarely. I haven't vibe-coded since the project at Amazon.

My husband is the breadwinner, and we can survive on his income, but the business is bringing in some fun money for me.

I think people should prepare for layoffs in the age of AI

Being laid off helped me remember that, at the end of the day, your job and company shouldn't be your entire life. It shouldn't come before your well-being.

I wish I hadn't sacrificed time with my child to get projects done towards the end of my time at Amazon. I'm glad I'm no longer sacrificing that time.

I think there will be more layoffs that will be attributed to AI's efficiency, and professionals should always be prepared. Reskilling in the age of AI won't necessarily stop a company from laying you off, but it might help you land a role faster.

Amazon did not provide a statement in response to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Do you have a story to share about being laid off in 2026? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com