I’ve now been laid off by two of the largest tech companies in the world, which feels like enough personal experience to compare them head to head. Now that I got my official separation letter from Amazon, I can finally reveal the results of this unintentional A/B test that’s apparently been running for years.
Scoring across categories is based purely on vibes and personal experience. Two important caveats to note:
1. I was on leave from Amazon when I got laid off, which likely impacted some of the communication and community aspects.
2. I was at Meta much longer, had much more impact and relationship building opportunities, and got to work on more than one team.
Layoff Face-off: Meta v. Amazon
Category: Sense of impending doom
Winner, no contest: Meta
This is where Meta excels. They started their first big purges of the modern era in 2022, and the hits are still coming. A media leak of my upcoming layoff (after we’d been told internally after the last round that no more were coming) added to an atmosphere of fear that had been quickly building over my time there. Amazon’s duration between leak and layoff was much shorter so doom didn’t have as much of a chance to build.
Category: Emotional Whiplash
Meta: 9.7
There was a good year after starting where I was truly surprised by how well the company treated its employees. It was the first place I felt job security. And then things got… weirder and weirder. By the time I got laid off, the Evil Corporation dial had been turned all the way up (and has not been turned down since as far as I can tell). I heard about the layoff leak while I was on a trip to London to meet part of my team in person, and had my director ask for more details about an expense report charge the night before the layoff email was sent, despite knowing I was about to be let go—unprecedented emotional whiplash efficiency.
Amazon: 2
This one is tough because I wasn’t at Amazon in what were probably very exciting early years. I started in 2025, after we’d all already realized we were in the darkest timeline. So I knew to expect the worst and I got it.
Category: Communication Clarity
Meta: 9
I have to give HR their props here. From the time I got my 5 AM email letting me and thousands of others know we were chopped and every step thereafter, I knew exactly what to expect and what to do. While I was there, it felt like there were actual people behind the communications, even if the facts of the matter sucked.
Amazon: 1.5
I’m honestly still confused about health insurance and severance stuff. It’s causing a lot of anxiety! (And is why I thought of this face-off to begin with.) This reflects my truly awful experience trying to manage medical leave at Amazon. It often felt like there were no beating hearts behind the HR portal (which is an indictment of the system rather than actual individuals).
Category: Severance package
Meta: 8.5
Big sweep. After the layoff, I didn’t have immediate stress—Meta automatically extended and paid for our insurance for 6 months after our separation date. Severance was generous for everyone, and especially those that had been there a while.
Amazon: 3
Again, I still don’t fully understand what I’m getting. But from what I can gather, it’s pretty underwhelming for a company of this scale and revenue. The only saving grace is NY’s WARN law, a mandatory 90-day notice requirement that ensures you’re still getting paid for a while (often with insurance) before the separation date.
Category: Sense of Personal Value/Dignity of Exit
TIE: A real race to the bottom. While I have had layoff experiences in the past, nothing has made me feel like a number/replaceable cog quite like these two companies.
Category: Community vibes
Meta: 9
Uncle Mark definitely doesn’t get credit for this one, but the post-layoff community was super helpful. Even though it’s sad if you think about it for too long, there was already an ecosystem in place to scoop up the discarded and offer a helping hand. My Meta experience was the first time I could imagine what it was like to go to an Ivy or belong in a sorority or just be a wealthy white guy. I also have maintained some strong friendships from my time there, and because of that, I have quite a few fond memories that rival layoff feelings.
Amazon: .5
I never heard from my boss. A hollow work experience, lacking camaraderie and care on a seemingly system level, from beginning to end. That’s definitely not everyone’s experience but where there’s smoke, etc. The company also had a very fragmented content design community, to the point where most people I worked with, including my boss, didn’t really get my purpose, skillset, or value, despite hiring me. I had no counterparts to reach out to—I didn’t meet one other content strategist/CD while I was there. So there was no real community for me to access, and if one exists, I don’t know how to access it.
Category: Existential Spiral Induced
Meta: 7
Meta sold its employees a dream. And for a while, it did feel pretty dreamy, even when highly stressful and competitive. The disorienting thing was getting bombarded by third-party recruiters weeks, months, years afterward about coming back as a contractor for half the pay, adding insult to injury and so forth. I also tried to interview for a full-time role through a helpful content designer still at Meta, but the Meta recruiter wouldn’t put me through in a way that felt like I had a layoff scarlet letter, despite the company’s lip service that laid off employees would be prioritized. When you add in that it took me over a year to find another full-time job, there was plenty of time to spiral.
Amazon: 9
Amazon is definitely getting a healthy boost here based on the general political and technological climate, but let’s give credit where it’s due. This experience has forced a complete reckoning when it comes to my sense of identity and purpose, making me certain I should not return to a similar cultural environment.
Final determination
There are no real winners here (besides maybe the stock market). Ultimately, it depends on how you look at it, and, for me, probably on the benefit of 20 years of hindsight.
Meta felt like I was climbing up to somewhere safe and realizing that the ladder was dissolving underneath my feet. I knew what Amazon was going into it, no switch-up involved. One promised me something before taking it away while the other never even pretended. From the outside, the outcome is the same, even if the betrayal just varies by degree.
This is probably less about these two companies and more about a shift in how all for-profit companies operate over time. The masks are off, the performances are long over—there’s no real incentive for them to pretend anymore. It’s probably time we met that energy in kind1.
Consider this essay solid evidence that I’m doing my part. 🫡