- Meta employee Gary Tay was laid off one day after training a new teammate
- He worked at Meta for nearly 10 years, longer than 99.5% of global staff
- Tay contributed to AI projects that improved team workloads by 200-300%
A Meta employee in Singapore has gone viral on LinkedIn after describing how quickly his job ended, just one day after onboarding a new teammate. Gary Tay, an AdTech Business Support Engineer, wrote that he spent Tuesday training his new "pod engineer" and thought he'd covered everything. "Today, I'm laid off," he posted, as Meta rolled out another round of job cuts affecting roughly 8,000 employees globally.
He 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. "Hired in London, retrenched in Singapore. Longer than 99.5% of current employees globally. 99.9% longer than anyone in the APAC office," he wrote.
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Tay said he was grateful to have worked at Meta, formerly Facebook, during its earlier years. He noted that few Singaporeans could claim over 15 years as an engineer split between Meta and Microsoft.
He said this year he invested time into retooling for AI, building systems that he said sped up team workloads by 200-300% while maintaining service levels for Meta's largest clients.
"AI is here to stay, apparently the human isn't," he wrote, capturing the unease many tech workers feel as automation reshapes roles.
See the post here:
Social media reaction
The post went viral on social media, but Tay urged people to "respect and give time to the thousands of affected employees, humans with lives to live and families to care for".
"My heart goes out to you and everyone who got laid off. Such a long time at any company makes you grow attached, but Meta hasn't been what it used to be since Sheryl Sandberg left. Good luck on your future voyages!" one user commented on his post.
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"I am really sorry to see this, Gary. You are an exceptional engineer; any company will be very lucky to have you. Sending you positive energy," another user wrote.
"Always a pleasure to work with you. With the immense knowledge you bring, everything becomes a bit easier. Really sad to see you go. Hopefully, we will get a chance to work together in the future," a third wrote.
