Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in an internal memo on Wednesday that he does not anticipate any further company-wide layoffs for the remainder of the year, according to a Reuters report citing the memo. The announcement coincides with a sweeping corporate reorganization at the Facebook parent company, which involved cutting 10% of its global workforce and reassigning 7,000 other employees to newly formed artificial intelligence (AI) divisions.
Layoffs Hit Multiple Departments
While the job cuts affected several departments, Zuckerberg appears to have sought to stabilize internal morale by signaling an end to broad, company-wide staff reductions for the foreseeable future. Multiple reports indicated that employee morale was low ahead of the May 20 job cuts.
Meta Begins Global Layoffs of 8,000 Staff Members
Meta started laying off employees across its global offices, with workers in Singapore reporting termination emails arriving in their inboxes as early as 4 a.m. local time, according to a Bloomberg report. In an internal memo, Meta's Head of People Janelle Gale explained the company's rationale behind the restructuring.
"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. "We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," she added.
Meta Told Employees to Work from Home
Ahead of the May 20 layoffs, Meta employees were instructed to work from home as the layoffs were implemented. The company also reassigned around 7,000 employees to new AI-focused teams working on products and AI agents.
Impact on Engineering and Product Teams
The cuts are expected to primarily affect Meta's engineering and product teams, even as Zuckerberg makes AI the company's top priority. Meta is competing with rivals such as Google and OpenAI. The company is expected to spend more than $100 billion on AI-related capital expenditure this year alone.
Surveillance of Employee Systems
Days before Meta began laying off 8,000 people, Mark Zuckerberg gathered his employees for an all-hands meeting and told them that their computers were being used to train AI, and they were chosen specifically because they are smarter than outside contractors. "It is not strategically in your interest for us to communicate everything in all the detail that we normally would on this," Zuckerberg said. In one meeting, Zuckerberg managed to confirm the surveillance, justify it, and defend the secrecy around it.
