Meta Begins 10% Layoffs... Zuckerberg Says No Additional Cuts This Year

[Financial News]

Meta Platforms Inc. began the 10% reduction in its total workforce on the 20th, local time. At the time, Meta also canceled plans to hire 6,000 new employees while cutting 8,000 jobs.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), told employees that there would be no additional company-wide layoffs this year.
The Wall Street Journal, citing sources and an internal memo, reported that Meta began large-scale layoffs and started reassigning roles on the morning of the same day.
Janelle Gale, Meta's Chief Human Resources Officer, told employees last month that 10% of the company's total workforce would be cut.
In a memo on the 20th, Gale said that, in addition to last month's plan, 7,000 employees would be assigned new roles focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and many management positions would also be adjusted so that managers take on individual tasks.
According to sources, employees in Asia and Europe, where the time zone is ahead of the United States, were the first to receive notices of layoffs and job reassignments.
Meta has moved to streamline its workforce and strengthen its competition with AI startups. It has eliminated or reduced middle-management positions, and it has also tracked employees' keyboard input and mouse clicks for use as AI training data.
As competition among AI models intensifies, Meta recently announced a major AI investment plan after falling behind rivals. The large-scale layoffs were decided to help secure funding.
The company plans to invest as much as $145 billion this year alone. Most of the money will go toward building AI data centers, which means purchasing expensive semiconductors needed for those facilities. Meta is aiming to develop what it calls a 'personal superintelligence' for 3.5 billion users a day.
The sweeping layoffs to expand funding for AI infrastructure are sharply hurting employee morale.
According to an analysis of the anonymous workplace forum Blind, Meta employees' morale has fallen to an all-time low. In particular, many appear to feel deeply threatened by the use of their work data for AI training. More than 1,500 Meta employees signed a petition calling for an end to collecting employees' 'computer use' data to train AI models.
Zuckerberg also appears to be under considerable pressure over the drop in employee morale.
According to the Financial Times (FT), Zuckerberg told employees in a memo on the same day that he was sympathetic to laid-off workers and that there would be no more company-wide layoffs this year.

dympna@fnnews.com Song Kyung-jae Reporter