Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has initiated a plan to lay off approximately 8,000 employees, representing 10% of its global workforce, starting Wednesday.
In this three-phase layoff, employees from the Integrity team (responsible for removing hate speech and unwanted content), as well as the cybersecurity and content design departments, have been the first to face the axe.
US-based employees who have been laid off will reportedly receive 16 weeks of severance pay, plus an additional 2 weeks of salary for each year of service.
What's worse is that Meta has also cancelled plans to hire approximately 6,000 new employees, while reassigning 7,000 current employees to the AI technology division.
Due to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's efforts to monitor employee performance and train AI systems, there is significant demoralization among staff. One employee revealed that "they are reusing employees to train the AI that will replace them," and with annual salary increases also being cut, over 1,500 employees have signed petitions refusing to allow their personal data to be collected.
Currently, Meta is preparing to spend between $125 billion to $145 billion USD excessively on AI technology development.
According to research by Goldman Sachs, more than 16,000 employees are being laid off monthly this year due to AI technology displacement, and major tech company Cisco is also preparing to cut over 4,000 employees, making the future outlook bleak for workers in the tech industry.
Ref: Aljazeera
