The instruction seemed routine at first: work from home today. Across Meta offices in the United States, Britain and other regions, employees were told not to report to work. There were no town halls, no visible panic and no signs that a major announcement was imminent. Then, during the early hours of the morning, layoff emails began arriving.
Meta Platforms has now begun cutting nearly 8,000 jobs which is close to 10 per cent of its global workforce, in what is emerging as one of the company’s biggest restructuring exercises in recent years. The first notifications were reportedly sent from Meta’s Singapore hub at around 4 am local time, with emails rolling out across time zones in phases.
The unusual sequence —work from home first, layoffs later which quickly became one of the most discussed aspects of the exercise.
Why Meta is restructuring around AI
The layoffs are closely tied to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive push toward artificial intelligence.
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Before the restructuring, Meta employed nearly 78,000 people globally. Alongside the job cuts, thousands of employees are also being reassigned into AI-focused teams as the company attempts to reorganise itself around faster product development and automation.
In an internal memo, Meta’s Chief People Officer Janelle Gale said around 7,000 employees would be moved into “AI-native” teams, while nearly 6,000 open roles had already been eliminated. She also indicated that Meta was reducing managerial layers to create smaller and faster-moving teams.
“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 in the memo.
Engineering and product divisions are expected to face the biggest impact, with reports suggesting additional restructuring could follow later this year.
Meta has already announced plans to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this year, largely focused on AI infrastructure and development.
Quiet layoffs, rising anxiety
Inside the company, reports suggest employee morale dropped sharply even before the official announcements.
According to reports cited by Bloomberg and NDTV, some employees began collecting free office snacks and spare laptop chargers after rumours of layoffs intensified internally.
The work-from-home directive was viewed by several employees as an attempt to avoid visible unrest or emotional scenes inside Meta offices while the layoffs were being executed.
At the same time, another controversy was brewing internally. Reports emerged that Meta was testing a new tool designed to track employee mouse movements and keystrokes to help train AI systems. More than 1,000 employees reportedly signed a petition opposing the monitoring practice.
A larger shift sweeping through tech
Industry experts believe the Meta layoffs reflect something much bigger than one company’s restructuring.
Several global technology giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco Systems and Oracle, have announced layoffs or voluntary exits in recent months.
Dipal Dutta, CEO of RedoQ, told NDTV that the industry is witnessing a “permanent structural decoupling” between workforce size and productivity because of advances in generative AI.
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“The traditional tech playbook predicated on scaling human capital to drive organisational growth has collapsed,” Dutta said, arguing that companies are increasingly prioritising AI-driven systems over routine operational roles.
According to him, the demand in the AI era is shifting away from repetitive task execution toward professionals capable of designing and managing complex AI-powered systems.
The Meta layoffs, experts say, may therefore represent more than just another round of Silicon Valley cost-cutting. They could be an early sign of how artificial intelligence is beginning to fundamentally reshape the global technology workforce.
