Meta Platforms Begins Global Employee Layoffs

Meta Platforms has started laying off employees across its global offices, with workers in Singapore reporting termination emails landing in their inboxes as early as 4AM local time on Wednesday.

According to a Bloomberg report, thousands of employees across the world began receiving layoff emails early Wednesday morning. Workers in Singapore were among the first to get the notification at around 4AM local time. Employees in Europe and the US are also expected to receive messages in their respective time zones.

In an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, Meta’s Head of People Janelle Gale explained the company’s thinking 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 encouraged to work from home as the layoffs rolled out. The company also reassigned around 7,000 employees to new AI-focused teams working on products and AI agents. The cuts are expected to mainly affect Meta’s engineering and product teams. Bloomberg reported that more layoffs could happen later this year as the company continues reshaping its workforce around AI projects. Meta had nearly 80,000 employees at the end of March before the latest restructuring and layoffs began.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes AI company’s top priority

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority as Meta competes 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. Bloomberg reported that Meta employees have increasingly raised concerns over layoffs and internal AI-related changes. More than 1,000 employees have reportedly signed a petition asking the company not to collect detailed device activity data, including keystrokes and screen content, for AI training purposes. Investors have also expressed concerns about Meta’s massive AI spending. According to Evercore analysts cited in the Bloomberg report, the latest layoffs may save the company about $3 billion, which is only a small part of Meta’s projected AI spending that could reach $145 billion this year.

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