'Packed my life in 5 suitcases, moved to NYC to join Instagram': Meta employee after getting laid off

Meta recently began laying off employees as part of its second round of job cuts which impacts 10,000 employees. The first wave of layoffs came in November which removed 11,000 positions. The company will be removing 10,000 employees over the year starting from April. The impact has been felt among designers, machine learning engineers and tech teams. Carolina Rayo shared one such instance.    

Carolina Rayo, a Content Designer at Instagram, was one of the many employees impacted by Meta’s second round of layoffs. In a post on her LinkedIn page, Rayo shared her experience of joining Instagram and moving to New York City from Chile.

“Ten months ago, I packed my whole life in 5 suitcases and flew alone from Chile to join Instagram in NYC and start a new life far from home,” Rayo wrote. She described the experience as “the adventure of a lifetime” and expressed gratitude for the opportunity to work with talented colleagues and create experiences with a global impact.

Despite the uncertainty and layoffs that came only a few months after she joined the company, Rayo remained positive about her time at Instagram. “This experience is nothing but a plus in my career, and I’m so grateful for all I learned,” she wrote.

Rayo’s story is just one example of the many employees affected by Meta’s recent layoffs. The company plans to continue to restructure the organisation in order to achieve 'efficiency'. 

Tech Layoffs

Meta is accompanied by other tech giants who have reduced their workforce substantially. Amazon conducted its second round of layoffs earlier this year, resulting in a total of 27,000 job cuts. In January, Google removed 12,000 employees from its ranks. Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently confirmed that Twitter is only left with 1,500 employees out of the 8,000 employees that were present when he took over. The layoffs are also impacting Indian brands like Koo, which is a Twitter-alternative. The company has reduced its workforce by 15 per cent. However, in comparison to companies in US, the impact has been much lesser on Indian organisations. 

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