Moyan Chen had been at Meta for less than a year when rumors about layoffs started circulating in March. The uncertainty was unbearable. "Some of my colleagues and I were dreading Wednesdays because Meta has sometimes laid people off on those days. So every Tuesday night when I left work I wondered if I was coming back."
She started checking her email early every Wednesday morning, waiting for news about her job status. That continued for weeks until word came that layoffs would happen on May 20.
When the day finally arrived, the feeling was different than she expected. "When the day finally came, and I got laid off, I was like, 'This is it.' It was a sense of relief, not of hurt."
Looking back, Moyan believes AI played a role in changing the course of her career. "I feel like, ultimately, I lost my job to AI."
As a data scientist on Instagram, she witnessed how AI tools were transforming routine work. "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."
She compares the situation to workers being on a large ship while the technology industry faces a major shift because of AI. "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?"
The experience changed her view of corporate careers. Previously, she stayed in her job because she worried about financial security outside a big company. "How am I going to feed myself if I don't work for a big company?" But after the layoff, her thinking changed. "Now I feel like it's not safe anymore, like I can get laid off at any time."