For the last month, employees at Meta have been on edge.<\/p>\n
In April, they were told that 8,000 of them, or 10 percent of the work force, would be laid off<\/a> on May 20 as Meta remade itself for the artificial intelligence era. On Monday, they learned that another 7,000<\/a> employees would be reassigned to new A.I. initiatives.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the ax fell. The layoffs began in Singapore, where at 4 a.m. local time emails went out to workers who were being laid off. Employees in Britain, the United States and elsewhere were notified early Wednesday morning in their respective time zones.<\/p>\n Many workers began exchanging somber messages remotely and checked the internal directory to figure out who on their teams was cut. On Meta\u2019s internal forums, hundreds reacted to the layoffs with salad emojis, their way to say \u201csalute.\u201d At least one person who was hired within the past month was laid off, two people with knowledge of the job cuts said.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s offices were mostly empty on Wednesday after Janelle Gale, the company\u2019s head of human resources, told employees this week that they should work from home. On the office walls, fliers sharing a petition to stop Meta\u2019s new program to track employee data for A.I. training<\/a> were visible, eight employees said. Some workers scavenged the offices for free snacks and laptop chargers on Monday in case they no longer had jobs by the end of the week, said the employees, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n The turmoil at Meta \u2014 which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp \u2014 offers an up-close look at layoffs in the A.I. age. Job cuts at tech companies in the name of the fast-evolving technology have gathered steam. Tech workers, it is becoming clear, have been creating their own A.I. replacements. Last week, the networking giant Cisco said it would eliminate 4,000 jobs as it shifted more resources to A.I. Microsoft<\/a>, Block<\/a> and Coinbase<\/a> also recently announced layoffs or buyouts because of the technology.<\/p>\n Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, has been vocal about staking his company on A.I. He has said he wants to create \u201csuperintelligence,\u201d an advanced A.I. that can act as the ultimate personal assistant. Last month, Meta said it would spend between $125 billion and $145 billion \u2014 more than double what it spent in 2025 \u2014 this year, much of it on A.I.<\/p>\n But the company\u2019s transformation from a social networking firm to an A.I.-first entity has been far from smooth. Employees have said the embrace of A.I. has led to anger and anxiety across Meta\u2019s 78,000 person work force, according to 13 current and former employees. The frustration was heightened by Meta\u2019s strong financial performance, with the company reporting record revenue last month, leading to questions about why job cuts were needed.<\/p>\n In a note to employees on Wednesday morning, Mr. Zuckerberg said he was grateful to those who were laid off for their work and optimistic about the company\u2019s A.I. efforts. More companywide layoffs were not expected this year, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSuccess isn\u2019t a given. A.I. is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes,\u201d Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. \u201cThe companies that lead the way will define the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the cuts, hundreds of employees in New York gathered for drinks on Tuesday night to \u201ccommiserate or celebrate, pick your poison,\u201d according to a copy of an invitation seen by The New York Times. The title of the event: \u201cNever a dull moment \ud83e\udee1.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 1,000 employees have so far signed the petition to stop the A.I. data tracking program, while others have rallied around internal posts critiquing top leadership. But as Mr. Zuckerberg pushes forward with A.I., employees are wrestling with how, or whether, they can do anything to change course.<\/p>\n \u201cA.I. is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion. It\u2019s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,\u201d Mack Ward, a software engineer at Meta, wrote in a post to employees this month, which was liked by over 2,000 people, encouraging them to sign the petition. \u201cSpeaking up is never easy, but \u2018easy\u2019 isn\u2019t what you were hired to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Bosworth, Meta\u2019s chief technology officer, addressed some concerns in a question-and-answer session last week. There are \u201ca tremendous number of employees feeling anxieties about their futures,\u201d he said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The Times. \u201cIt\u2019s all bad. I\u2019m not going to try to sugarcoat that.\u201d<\/p>\n Executives have taken steps to retain workers they see as key talent. One director-level employee was offered additional equity worth roughly $500,000 to stay, two people familiar with the matter said, a tactic that Meta also used to keep certain employees during its last round of layoffs. Some refused the offers and left, the people said.<\/p>\n Workers who were laid off were given 16 weeks of severance pay, plus an additional two weeks for every year they worked at the company.<\/p>\n This month, Meta began enlisting hundreds of employees to work for a new team led by Maher Saba, a vice president of engineering, called Applied A.I. and Engineering, five of the employees said. Some workers began referring to the effort as a \u201cDraft.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Saba\u2019s new team, which so far has around 2,000 employees, will use the data gathered by the employee tracking program to create A.I. tools, four employees said. It will have fewer layers of management than other parts of Meta, with around 50 workers reporting to each manager. Those who joined the group would be safe from the layoffs, the company said.<\/p>\n In an email to managers this month about the new A.I. team, Meta instructed them to emphasize to employees that it was \u201ca high priority initiative, directly from Mark.\u201d<\/p>\n Participation was not optional, the message said.<\/p>\n Kitty Bennett contributed research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last month, employees at Meta have been on edge. 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