Meta, the platform Zuckerberg founded, is planning major layoffs this week.
Meta detailed its layoff plans in a memo shared with employees on Monday, saying the global layoffs will be accompanied by new organizational changes aimed at improving the company’s AI workflows.
Facebook’s owner initially planned to lay off 10% of its workforce on Wednesday, with deeper cuts expected later this year.
In a recent memo, Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief human resources officer, told employees that the company plans to move 7,000 employees to new initiatives related to AI workflows and eliminate management roles.
Additionally, “many leaders will announce organizational changes,” she said.
“As organizational leaders grapple with change, many have incorporated AI-native design principles into new organizational structures. We are now at a point where many organizations can operate in a flatter structure with smaller teams in pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership.”
AI overhaul drives reinvention:
The changes are part of a broader overhaul that Meta is planning this year, as the company ramps up its investment in AI as it seeks to put AI agents at the center of both its product offerings and internal work approach.
These reflect a broader pattern of AI-related layoffs at major U.S. companies this year, particularly in the tech sector.
In total, the layoffs and transfers will affect approximately 20% of the company’s workforce. Gale said in the memo that some of the moves have already taken place, while others will be notified to employees on Wednesday. North American employees were ordered to work from home on Wednesday.
Meta also closed an additional 6,000 open positions as part of the process, she told employees in an earlier memo.
The social media giant had 77,986 employees at the end of March, according to company filings.
Transferring an employee to the AI department:
Gale said the new initiatives, where employees are being transferred, or “drafted” as many staff say, include Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN, two teams previously announced by CTO Andrew Bosworth as part of Meta’s “AI for Work” initiative.
Both aim to develop AI agents that can autonomously perform tasks currently performed by human staff.
Central Analytics, which will also be moving, was also mentioned in Bosworth’s previous announcement and is aimed at measuring productivity and analytics for agent development.
Gale said details of another new initiative called Enterprise Solutions will be shared soon.
The change sparked a revolt among Meta’s employees, who protested the move by posting flyers in the company’s offices and posting angry posts on Workplace, an internal communications platform.
More than 1,000 employees have signed a petition opposing the installation of mouse-tracking software used to train Meta’s artificial intelligence models, which help replicate the way humans interact with computers.
