Meta lays off about 8,000 employees and reallocates workers to AI-focused roles

Last month, Meta laid off 10% of its workforce to counter AI spending, and reassigned another 10% of staffers to a mandatory AI teams to train its models. Now, the company’s chief technology officer, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, said that morale at Meta is “probably one of the worst it’s ever been.”  According to Business Insider, during a June 2 internal meeting called “Tuesdays with Boz,” Bosworth said morale is “maybe not the worst it’s ever been in 20 years here, but it’s probably up there. It’s definitely up there.” “I can think Cambridge Analytica was probably the worst,” Bosworth added, referring to the 2010s political scandal when up to 87 million Facebook users’ data was used to target voters without their consent. Meta declined to provide further comment to Fast Company. Aside from the layoffs, employee dissatisfaction with Meta has grown for other reasons in the last few months.  In April, the company faced backlash for using mouse-tracking software to collect employee data that would train its AI models. Staffers pushed back by creating an online petition and posting flyers across U.S. offices encouraging Meta employees to sign. At the same time, Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion this year on AI infrastructure. Fast Company previously reported that Meta employees were venting about AI and layoffs on Blind. According to a report from the anonymous workplace forum, posts containing negative sentiment about AI at Meta had grown to 83% since late 2025—a roughly 300% jump since 2024, when 20% of posts on the site about AI at Meta were negative. “Meta is dead and depressing,” one post on the platform said after the company’s layoff announcements; “They do not care about the employees anymore and all they care about is AI,” another post read.  In April, Meta reported $56.31 billion in revenue— a 33% year-over-year increase—and nearly $26.8 billion in profit for the first three months of the year. Employees, on the other hand, have had their stock portion of annual raises cut by 5%, and, according to Wired, median total compensation dropped from $417,400 in 2024 to $388,200 last year. “Meta needs to be the best place for the best people to do their best work,” Bosworth said in a memo issued Monday, which was first reported by Wired.  According to a portion of the memo—titled “Back to Day 1”—provided to Fast Company from sources close to the matter, Bosworth also said the company “must provide our people the support to do things the right way for the long term, including taking smart risks when the situation calls for it and to be recognized for it.”  “If we can deliver on these commitments, I hope we can rekindle the best of the culture we joined,” Bosworth also wrote. “One where people have the psychological safety to take risks and do the right thing over a long period of time.” “We shook up the management structure that was providing you stability while rapid changes in strategy, including the boom/bust cycle of hiring, left entire teams in the lurch,” Bosworth added in the memo, as Wired reported. To make up for the dip in employee morale, Bosworth outlined that staffers would receive more attention by capping managers at 20 direct reports, and placing a limit on the number of times employees switch to new managers as a result of restructurings. He also added that Meta leadership would work towards better explaining company strategy shifts to employees. Bosworth added that Meta doesn’t believe AI would outright replace AI workers, but that someone more skilled in AI might.  “We should heed the saying, ‘AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows AI might,’” he added, echoing a sentiment that other AI leaders—like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang—have said. Finally, he added that he would work towards making Meta a “fun and enjoyable” place. Some of those tactics include improving workplace perks, like the break areas with snacks and drinks, and increasing travel budgets and spending on social events.  Time will tell if smaller team sizes and snacks will be enough to boost the energy of a workforce that has been turned upside down in a few short months.

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Meta's 8,000-person layoff on May 20 hit middle managers and software engineers hardest, with public filings showing more than 1,400 managers cut, nearly half of them software engineering managers. The data has reopened CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2023 line that he didn't want "managers managing managers" at Meta. With AI capex hitting $145 billion this year, the company is now reshaping its org chart around smaller teams and individual builders.

The two groups made up more than half of Meta's layoffs in California and Washington state. Meta is embracing small teams and AI tools internally.