Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had planned a major shake-up but failed to implement it amid an employee revolt, according to internal company documents, seen by Reuters, and interviews with insiders.
To make its workforce “AI native,” Meta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show. Staff revolted – and hours before a big layoff in May, the CEO called off planning for further cuts.
The plan was code-named Project OT – short for Organization Transformation. It envisioned an “AI native” future for the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants reportedly hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence.
According to the plan, as reported by Reuters, AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, “talent-dense” cadres of human staffers, according to one internal planning document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the project.
In scenario-planning exercises, sources said executives explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta by up to 60%.
Some employees would be offered roles in new units, while others would be laid off as part of a culling that one human-resources executive projected would be as big as or bigger than the company’s cuts of around 25% three years ago, according to another internal document.
The restructuring would be carried out in two “waves,” beginning with a first purge in May and followed by another shake-up in November, according to internal planning documents seen by Reuters.
Layoffs would be supplemented by closing open positions and pushing out people Meta believed were poor performers. These and other details of the plan, including the scale of the restructuring, haven’t been previously reported.
But on the night of 19 May, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked.
Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters.
According to Reuters, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company’s AI transformation initiatives were partly intended to replace them.
Internal data also suggested that autonomous AI “agent” technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains.
Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan AI spending.
This report revealed, for the first time, the rapid pace of the cuts Meta was considering, the thinking behind the plans, and how they quickly unravelled.
