As Meta laid off nearly 8,000 employees across the globe, an emotional post by an employee in Singapore after he was asked to quit has gone viral on social media. Gary Tay, an AdTech Business Support Engineer, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that he spent Tuesday training his new "pod engineer" and the next day, he was "laid off". The terminated Meta employee revealed in his post that he spent 3,544 days at the company, about 9 years and 9 months. He joined in London before moving to Singapore.
"Yesterday i was training up my new pod engineer, glad i managed to squeeze in everything. Today. I'm laid off. 3,544 days (9yrs,~9mths).Hired in London, retrenched in Singapore. Longer than 99.5% of current employees globally. 99.9% longer than anyone in the APAC office," his post read. He said he was grateful to have worked at Meta, formerly Facebook, during its earlier years, adding that not many Singaporeans can say they have been a engineer at Meta and Microsoft for over 15 years.
ALSO READ: Meta told employees to work from home, then sent 4 am layoff emails to US staff
AI here to stay, human isn't
In his post, Gray Tad mentioned a line that caught people's attention and captured the unease many tech workers feel as automation reshapes roles. "AI is here to stay, apparently the human isn't. I'll be reassessing my career options in the next few months while i patiently wait for my newborn to come in July," he wrote.
"Grateful for the chance to be part Facebook early days. Not many Singaporeans can say they have been a engineer at Meta & Microsoft for over 15yrs. This year was exceptional. Spent a huge amount of time retraining myself with AI and developing systems for the teams. Speed up workload by 2-300% while still keeping SLA with the world's largest clients," his post read.
