WFH and then a 4 am mail: Tech giant Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees amid AI transformation

In April, Meta employees were informed that 8,000 of them, around 10% of the workforce, would be laid off on May 20 (Wednesday) as the tech giant readied itself for the era dominated by artificial intelligence.

The New York Times reported that the orders began execution in Singapore, where at 4 am local time Wednesday emails went out to workers who were being laid off. Employees in Britain, the United States and elsewhere are also to be notified early Wednesday in their time zones.

On Monday, they learned that another 7,000 employees would be reassigned to new AI initiatives, which aimed at developing AI agents that can carry out tasks currently performed by humans.

Janelle Gale, the company’s head of human resources, told employees this week that they should work from home. The office walls saw fliers hung up by some workers sharing a petition to stop Meta’s new programme to track their data for AI training, eight employees said in a statement to the Times.

"Some workers scavenged the offices for free snacks and laptop chargers on Monday in case they no longer had jobs by the end of the week," said the employees who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, the Times reported.

Meta's decisions offer a perspective on companies opting to layoff employees in the era of AI.

Many IT companies have begun scheduling layoffs, leaving employees worried and reflecting structural shifts within the organisations. Amazon, Cognizant, Oracle, and LinkedIn are some of the big companies that laid off employees recently in an attempt to steer through AI options.

The change in Meta is a part of an overhaul planned this year, as the company surges its AI investments in ⁠a bid to center ‌AI agents in both its product offerings and its approach to work internally, Reuters reported.

New initiatives where Gale said employees were being transferred include Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, two teams previously announced by CTO Andrew Bosworth as part of Meta's "AI for Work" efforts.