Henry Chen started at Facebook as a contractor in 2012, inspecting conference rooms. He had been a wedding DJ, taught himself to code, and was working toward an education degree before dropping out for personal reasons. The AV engineering contract at Facebook was just supposed to be a way to earn money while figuring out what to do next.
From there, Facebook grew quickly, and his role grew with it. He progressed from inspecting conference rooms to building them out. In 2015, he landed a full-time operations engineer role. Around 2017, he started experimenting with Python despite having very little coding experience. He wrote a script that made updating conference room technology much faster — and it changed the direction of his career. Over the next several years, he transitioned into a software engineering role and eventually became a tech lead.
But after Meta's major layoffs in late 2022 and early 2023, things started to change. The focus shifted toward "doing more with less." The ongoing changes were especially difficult for Henry because he was on paternity leave from August 2025 through near the end of the year. By the time he returned to work, the company was using AI much more extensively, there had been team and leadership shifts, and it took him some time to get reacclimated. After being away for four months, it felt like the whole company had changed.
On May 20, 2026, he learned that he'd lost his job — and that many of his colleagues had lost theirs, too. Meta provided a generous severance package reflecting his roughly 10 years as a full-time employee. He spent time with his family during his kids' summer break and planned to resume his job search after about a month.
When he resumed searching, he hadn't interviewed for a job in 10 years. So he hired a coach to help with system design interview prep and started building a software system from the ground up to strengthen his understanding of industry-standard tools — something he didn't need inside Meta's proprietary ecosystem. He's split between pursuing collaboration technology roles, broader IT roles at smaller companies, and software engineering opportunities where he can continue building on his coding skills. Despite the uncertainty, he remains optimistic and grateful for the flexibility to find a role where he'll continue to learn and grow.