Meta to cut 8,000 sweeping jobs worldwide | Technology News

Meta has halted plans to hire 6,000 positions amid ongoing layoffs and a major expansion of its manufacturing operations.

Meta has announced layoffs that will affect 10 percent of its global workforce, representing about 8,000 people.

The cuts, which began on Wednesday, are planned to be carried out in three waves, starting at 4 a.m. for those affected, Reuters reported.

Employees affected so far include members of the company’s ethics team — a team responsible for removing negative content and hate speech — as well as members of the company’s cybersecurity and product development divisions, according to a Business Insider report.

Workers in the United States will receive 16 weeks of pay, in addition to two additional weeks each year that have been used for the company, representatives of Meta confirmed to Al Jazeera.

In addition to the cuts, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram said it will end plans to hire 6,000 people and transfer another 7,000 employees to positions related to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

This comes amid reports of a decline in quality at the company led by Mark Zuckerberg after the launch of an AI program to monitor employees in order to test Meta to train its AI models, which is against employees, the Wall Street Journal said.

According to the paper, more than 1,500 people signed a petition demanding that the company not collect their data.

The move is part of a series of issues affecting morale, with one unnamed employee telling Wired that morale is low because US workers “are being used to train AI models that will replace them”.

Another point of concern is the reduction in workers’ compensation, including cuts to rising annual wages and median compensation that is dropping by nearly $30,000.

Investing in AI

Zuckerberg, who is the sixth richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is not averse to investing in business. However, the funds have focused on AI development, including the Meta Superintelligence initiative.

Spending on financial services is expected to hit $125bn to $145bn annually, doubling from 2025.

“The way to think about investing is that we’re betting (on) things that people care about, and that people will care about in the future,” Zuckerberg said during an April earnings call.

A recent study by Goldman Sachs found that AI-driven layoffs equate to more than 16,000 salary cuts per month this year. This comes as technology giant Cisco announced it was cutting nearly 4,000 jobs.

The Meta rose 0.1 percent in afternoon trading.