Data Scientists at Meta Mostly Unaffected in 2022 Q4 layoffs

Feb 27, 2023
There’s a common trope that in the recent tech layoffs that data scientists are cut more than software engineers in times of austerity.

Very few data scientists at Meta/Google laid off

In our analysis of Meta WARN data from the 2022 Q4 layoffs we found only 16 data science employees laid off of 2746 total in California (which represent about 20% of the total layoff of 11,000 people)
 
Similarly, Google only laid off 11 data science employees in their 2023 Q1 layoffs.
 
Even if we expand the title “data scientist” look for “Analyst” OR “data” in titles, we only find 120 employees laid off. Far lower than the at least 1200 software engineers Google laid off in Q1
 

Why is this the case?

Why could this be? A couple of possible reasons:
  • The ratio or engineer/design/data science to data science is relatively larger than. 1 DS to 10 engineers,2 designers, 2 marketing.
  • Meta/Facebook & Google’s business model is dependent more on ads/data than other companies
 

Explore the data for yourself

See for yourself by using using WARNTracker’s by role & level view. You’ll need to use a desktop browser to use the built-in table filters:
 
notion image
 
Like this analysis? Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date!
 
 

© 2025 WARNTracker. All rights reserved.

Some logos provided by Clearbit.

Get the Data