Meta layoff on May 20 pushed data scientist rethink

Meta layoff – A 24-year-old data scientist living in New York City says Meta’s May 20 layoff ended her job after just under a year—and pushed her to question whether big-company data analytics is still a safe career path in an AI-driven world.

On the night before, Moyan Chen kept checking herself—because at Meta, layoffs could still arrive without warning.

When rumor of job cuts leaked in March, there was no timeline. Chen, who lives in New York City, says she and several coworkers began dreading Wednesdays, after Meta had sometimes laid off people on those days. So each Tuesday night, she wondered whether she’d be back the next morning.

The uncertainty didn’t lift until April, when she says a date appeared: May 20. “When the day finally came. and I got laid off. I was like. ‘This is it.’ It was more like relief than pain. ” she said. adding that her reaction felt closer to exhale than grief. She had been in the role for just under a year.

Chen believes her job was ultimately “lost to AI.” Her former coworkers. she said. were also hit. and many have been posting on LinkedIn to look for new opportunities. In her description. the situation feels like everyone is on open water while Meta—a “huge ship”—moves fast. and then an “AI storm comes” and forces people to decide whether to jump to something smaller and slower.

Some former colleagues told her to look toward finance, she said, arguing it may take longer for AI to adopt there. But she questioned the logic: “Ultimately, is the same thing going to happen to you?”

She isn’t sure what she wants to do next. During the weeks after the layoff. she says she wasn’t as nervous as she might have been because she is single and has no family in the US. Her parents have also been wanting her to return to China—something she described as the “worst-case scenario” even as she emphasized how much she loves the US and the energy of New York City.

Meta offered severance, she said, and that matters. “Meta has been very generous with severance, so I have a couple of months to figure out what I’ll do next.”

“I don’t think this layoff is a bad thing for me,” Chen said. “It’s more like a switch in my career path.” She added that the experience is making her see she could “live a different life,” and she doesn’t want the same kind of corporate climb she used to worry would be necessary to survive.

When she talks about her earlier decision to stay at Meta. she points to a different fear: that she wouldn’t be able to “feed” herself without a big-company job. She says she didn’t resign partly because of that. Now, she feels less safe about the old model. “I used to wonder. ‘How am I going to feed myself if I don’t work for a big company?’ That’s why I didn’t resign from Meta. I kept working, and I worked hard,” she said.

But after May 20, she said the feeling is different—Meta can let people go, and she believes it could happen “at any time.”

As she considers her next move, she has started creating content online to document what she’s learning about AI and how her career journey is changing. She is also interested in exploring career coaching for people “who are experiencing this transition brought about by this new technology.”

Her worry isn’t just about losing one job. She expects AI to reshape the work itself.

At Meta, Chen worked as a data scientist on Instagram. She said that for that type of job, “the more repetitive tasks are definitely going away.” Writing queries and spending time creating visualizations—she says—have already been replaced by AI in Big Tech.

She argues that if someone’s skill set is only coding. or only “writing SQL queries. ” tracking and analyzing metrics with Python. that’s no longer enough. “There will still be a role called ‘data scientist. ’ but they will need to know more about other functions. ” she said. She described an emerging trend that requires broader skills and knowledge because of AI.

Chen also gave a specific example of how quickly the tools have improved. “It got to the point where I wouldn’t check AI-generated queries because they have gotten so accurate,” she said. She said the mistake rate felt low for narrow tasks: “I thought that if AI made a mistake on a specific task. I would make 10.” She said AI still struggles more with big. ambiguous projects—where it would make “a lot of mistakes.”.

In her view, AI has become something like “a talented individual contributor.” She said she isn’t interested in AI as a stand-alone technology so much as how it changes how people work and build products.

That outlook points her toward a different kind of employer. She said she would consider joining an AI startup if she finds a team that aligns with her interests and values.

Those companies, she acknowledged, can be risky. But she said staying at a large company doing traditional data analytics and reporting jobs feels more dangerous over time. “Those companies can be risky. but staying at a big company doing traditional data analytics and reporting jobs just feels like I will be left behind. That’s riskier in the long term.”.

Chen remains in a transition period and does not yet have all the answers. She does know one thing: after May 20. her career question stopped being about finding the next job title—and started becoming about what kind of work will still matter when AI moves from tool to teammate. and when the next layoff could arrive again without warning.

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