Meta plans to lay off about 8,000 employees on May 20 despite posting record Q1 profits, sparking anger among staff. The company cites rising AI infrastructure costs as the reason. Employees report low morale, with some hoping to be laid off for severance, even as Meta invests heavily in AI hiring and expansion.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is preparing to cut roughly 8,000 jobs even as it posts record profits, and employees say the mood inside the company has never been worse.

Meta is set to hand out approximately 8,000 pink slips on May 20, eliminating around 10 percent of its global workforce across Facebook, Instagram, and its other properties. The cuts will arrive just weeks after the company reported one of the most profitable quarters in its history, $56.31 billion in revenue and $26.8 billion in net income for Q1 2026. For many employees, that contradiction is proving impossible to stomach.

According to a report by WIRED, which spoke to more than a dozen current and former Meta employees, the atmosphere inside the company is deeply troubled. "Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives," one Instagram employee told the outlet. Morale has sunk so low that several staffers say they are actively hoping to be laid off, if only to collect the 16 weeks of severance pay and 18 months of paid health care that come with an exit package.

Meta's chief people officer says 'layoffs are necessary'