Plan to lay off 8,000 employees
Despite the recently announced large-scale layoffs at Meta, the process of job cuts shows no signs of stopping. Last month, the company had planned to remove about 10% of the global workforce, i.e. about 8,000 employees. Now there are indications that there may be more layoffs in the future.
The company's Chief People Officer Janelle Gale, while answering employees' questions in an internal meeting, said that she cannot promise that there will be no further layoffs. He said that the company's business is strong, but such decisions can be taken due to changing priorities, tough competition and the need for cost control.
Gale said the company will continue to make changes to teams as needed and, where possible, employees will be shifted to other roles. He also said that its impact may be different on different departments.
Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg clarified that Artificial Intelligence is not the main reason for layoffs. He said that small teams are becoming more effective due to AI, but job cuts are not happening only for this reason.
Zuckerberg also clarified the situation regarding productivity tracking of employees. He said that Meta does not directly monitor employees, but uses data from activities like keyboard and mouse in a general form to improve AI models.
Gale admitted that the layoffs had an impact on employee morale. However, the company is trying to handle this process in a better way. The affected employees have also been given the facility to provide healthcare cover for 18 months.
Meanwhile, Meta continues to focus on its AI business. The company's AI head Alexander Wang has introduced a new model named Spark. At the same time, CFO Susan Li said that determining the right number of employees for the company still remains a challenge. The layoffs and AI investments in Meta are going on simultaneously, which clearly shows that the company is trying to adapt to the changing tech environment.
