Meta recently laid off nearly 8,000 workers. This resulted in a loss of around 10 percent of the company’s total workforce. A final email sent to laid-off employees added to the controversy amid global discussion of the incident. That email said if you are in the office right now, take your personal belongings and go home. The message was described as insulting by many employees and sparked widespread criticism.
Staff received the email around 4am. It clearly states that unfortunately your role is no longer needed in the restructuring of the company.
According to the data, Meta had a total of 78,000 employees. Initially, they were asked to work from home and then the layoffs were emailed in the wee hours of the night. Emails are sent from the Singapore office. Not only this, thousands of other employees have been transferred to other places. According to Janelle Gale, a senior company official, these employees have been replaced by new artificial intelligence or AI-based teams, and about 6,000 vacancies have been eliminated entirely.
However, Meta activists had anticipated such a move. This is because the company was focusing more on AI technology these days and the list of those to be laid off was prepared in advance. The email is believed to have been sent to employees to work from home to avoid any ruckus in the office. The engineering and product teams will be the most affected by the layoffs.
Experts say more employees could lose their jobs by the end of the year. Meta previously said it plans to spend $125 billion to $145 billion this year, most of which will be used for artificial intelligence. So it won’t be surprising if there are more layoffs to meet in the coming days.
