Meta has begun laying off 8,000 employees globally as part of its restructuring to focus on artificial intelligence, with official notifications sent on Wednesday. The job cuts will affect Meta employees around the world, with those in Asian countries receiving notifications at 4 am Singapore time on Wednesday. This round of layoffs represents nearly 10% of Meta's workforce, with engineering, product, and content design teams reportedly taking the hardest hit. The company also scrapped 6,000 open roles and forcibly transferred 7,000 employees into AI-native organizations. As per Bloomberg, layoff notifications were sent in three waves at 4 am local time across different regions, with employees in Singapore being among the first to receive notices, while staff across Europe and the US were also informed in their respective time zones.
According to a Business Insider report, Meta employees in the US will receive a severance package including 16 weeks or four months of base pay, plus two weeks for every year of continuous employment. They'll also get 18 months of healthcare coverage for themselves and their families, triple the previous amount. Employees outside the US are expected to receive similar compensation packages, although the exact benefits will vary depending on local labour laws and country-specific policies. In an internal memo, Meta HR chief Janelle Gale stated that managerial positions would be cut across the company to create flatter organizational structures, enabling smaller teams to move faster with more ownership. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership," Gale wrote in the memo, as per Business Insider.
Meta Platforms, currently the 10th most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation, has carried out several rounds of layoffs in recent years. Since 2022, Meta has laid off more than 30,000 employees as Mark Zuckerberg has doubled down on efficiency while pushing forward with heavy AI investment. The company has committed well in excess of $100 billion to AI capital expenditures this year. According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has encouraged engineers to use AI agents for coding and outlined plans to track employees' devices to improve technology. The latest cuts are expected to impact Meta's engineering and product teams the hardest, with reports suggesting additional layoffs could take place later this year. Reuters also reported last month that Meta installed tracking software on employees' work computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keyboard shortcuts — data the company intends to use to train its AI systems to better perform tasks currently done by human workers.
The Bay Area tech layoffs are part of a broader wave affecting major companies, with Intuit also announcing 3,000 position eliminations - roughly 17% of its workforce - by July 31. Intuit, known for TurboTax and QuickBooks, will also shut down satellite offices in Reno and Woodland Hills as part of operational streamlining. Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Economic Institute, noted that while the AI disruption is real, the AI opportunity is also present, with new companies emerging and people being employed in the region. He pointed to encouraging signs including rising home and rental prices and commercial office market recovery, with San Francisco's first quarter office demand approaching pre-pandemic levels. However, Chris Markowski of Watchdog on Wall Street argues that companies share responsibility for current cuts through management decisions in recent years. Business attorney and analyst Parag Amin said the trend of large tech companies using AI as a justification for workforce reductions is unlikely to slow down, with companies such as Meta looking at the real possibility of using AI to replace human labor.
