Facebook’s parent company Meta cut nearly 8,000 jobs, roughly 10 per cent of its workforce, and also shifted more than 7,000 employees into AI-focused teams at the same time. A viral post shared by a user named Julian claimed that employees at the company were first asked to build internal AI tools before layoffs started at multiple divisions. The timing of the post is significant and is now being widely discussed across social media, especially as Meta pushes aggressively into artificial intelligence.
According to the post, Meta had organised a company-wide “AI week” a few months back and during that week, the company paused the regular work and employees were asked to familiarise themselves with AI tools, the post claimed. The post added that when the exercise was about to end, workers were reportedly expected to create early versions of internal AI products that could later be developed further inside the company.
Julian claimed that his wife spent months helping refine an AI product alongside senior executives and engineers, all while privately worrying that the same technology she was working on could one day replace her own job.
“After that week, projects that were approved were chosen to continue further development with AI and engineers. For the past couple of months, my wife has been working with a superior and an engineer to refine her approved project, knowing that it could ultimately be what replaces her. Fast forward to today: She’s canned,” the post added.
“This isn’t a sob story, we will figure out how to move forward. But this is a wakeup call to everyone wanting to find entry- to mid-level, work in a white collar field. AI is only going to make your job prospects worse,” the post concluded.
The post has garnered more than a million views and has struck a nerve with people online. The fear of losing jobs to AI is no longer confined to factory floors or repetitive manual work. It is increasingly spreading across offices, tech campuses, boardrooms, and engineering teams. Even the professionals helping build AI systems are starting to question whether they may also be creating the technology that could eventually replace them.
How social media reacted
Across social media, users reacted with a mix of anger, anxiety, and resignation. “This is a hard nut to crack. Losing a job can be traumatising, I have been there,” a netizen commented.
“That’s the part people don’t talk about enough. Employees were literally training the systems that may end up replacing parts of their own jobs. Tough situation for a lot of talented people,” read another comment. “forcing everyone to “build an ai tool ” for a week and then doing mass layoffs is such a precise summary of where corporate ai is right now ngl,” another one said.
“I was at Cisco until last week. Same thing. They wanted us to figure out how to ad AI into our workstreams. I refused. Maybe that is whybI was let go,” said another.
Meta layoffs
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta on Wednesday kicked off a major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs — among the largest in the social media giant’s history. Employees were told in April that a 10% reduction of the workforce was coming on May 20, and earlier this week, they were reportedly informed that another 7,000 staffers would be reassigned to AI-focused positions. Employees across US, Singapore and Europe started receiving 4 am emails regarding their terminations.
Zuckerberg defends Meta’s bloodbath layoffs
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s brutal layoffs of 8,000 workers, saying “success isn’t a given” as the tech giant pushes full steam ahead into the highly competitive AI sector.
“Success isn’t a given. AI is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes,” Zuckerberg told employees in the missive, which was obtained by several news outlets. “The companies that lead the way will define the next generation.”
Mark Zuckerberg said it’s “always sad to say goodbye to people who have contributed to our mission,” and expressed his “gratitude” to all those impacted for their “hard work” — adding that execs “do not expect other companywide layoffs this year.”