Gary Tay gave Meta nearly a decade of his life — exactly 3,544 days. Based in Singapore, he worked as an AdTech engineer, surviving the massive "Year of Efficiency" cuts back in 2022 when thousands were let go across the company.
He spent the last year busting his tail, retraining himself in AI and building systems that sped up his team's workflow by up to 300%. He was doing everything right — adapting to the new technology, proving his value, staying ahead of the curve.
The day before the May 2026 layoff emails went out, he trained a new pod engineer on the team's workflow. He was onboarding someone new, passing on institutional knowledge, being the kind of senior team member companies claim to value most.
The next morning, at 4 a.m., the email arrived. "Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated." His badge died immediately. Internal system access vanished within an hour.
This wasn't a performance issue. This wasn't a cost-cutting measure targeting underperformers. Meta was cutting 8,000 people — 10% of their global workforce — to fund a $125-145 billion AI infrastructure bet. The engineering and product pods took massive hits.
Tay wrote a post that hit a nerve across the entire tech industry. Just months before his first child was due to be born, he summed up what thousands of tech workers were feeling:
"AI is here to stay; apparently the human isn't."
The post resonated because it captured the cruel irony of the moment: the workers who adapted, who learned the new tools, who proved their value — they were getting the same 4 a.m. email as everyone else. The company wasn't keeping the AI-fluent humans. It was keeping the AI.