- Mark Zuckerberg says there will be no more major cuts at Meta
- The company recently laid off 8,000 employees and reassigned 7,000 more
- Zuckerberg also promises to improve “communication” about cuts
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he doesn’t expect any more major layoffs at the company this year.
Speaking on the day his company laid off 8,000 people (about 10% of its workforce) and redeployed thousands of other employees to new departments focused on artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg said this was the end of cuts for now.
“I want to be clear that we do not anticipate any other layoffs across the company this year,” Zuckerberg said in an internal memo (as of Pakinomist). “I also want to acknowledge that we haven’t been as clear as we want to be in our communication, and that’s an area I want to make sure we improve.”
As expected, the memo didn’t exactly go down well with some Meta employees, who Pakinomist claims some have left comments on his post quoting the words “for the entire company” and “expect” and another noting that “Things go ‘unexpected’ sometimes.”
News of the recent Meta layoffs dominated headlines around the world, largely due to the suddenness and apparent difficulty of the process for those involved.
The Financial Times claims that Meta employees in North America were told to stay home the day the cuts were announced, with emails outlining their fate sent out in the early hours of the morning.
In addition to the workers who were laid off, around 7,000 other Meta employees have now been transferred to new AI-focused teams. Apparently, Zuckerberg has long been convinced that embracing artificial intelligence will lead to major advances in productivity and efficiency, and has poured billions into implementing the technology in his company.
Among the new teams is one reportedly called ‘Applied AI’, which appears to be focused on “optimizing” Meta’s AI models, with another focused on building agents to help staff automate workflows.
Zuckerberg’s comments could also suggest that while no large-scale layoffs are expected anytime soon, smaller team-level cuts could still take place.
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