Meta To Lay Off 10% Of Workforce In May, More Cuts To Follow Later: Report - NDTV Profit

So Meta, having spent the last decade convincing us all that the future was social, then that it was virtual, and most recently that it was AI-powered, has decided the real future is fewer people. According to Reuters, the company will begin its 'first round of planned layoffs this year' on May 20th, targeting about 10% of its global workforce—roughly 8,000 souls. That this is explicitly labelled 'the initial round' with 'further layoffs planned in the second half of the year' is the kind of forward-looking transparency investors presumably appreciate, a neatly scheduled culling to optimise the balance sheet for the coming AI winter.

It's a delightful bit of corporate choreography: announce the cuts months in advance so everyone can spend the spring polishing their CVs and watching the clock tick down to D-Day. The report specifies the cuts are coming from Meta's 'global workforce,' which means the axe will fall across the very teams that built the platforms now being automated. One imagines the all-hands memos will be masterclasses in euphemism, praising 'strategic rebalancing' and 'efficiency enhancements' while 8,000 people are shown the door—a process that, according to the article, is merely the opening act.

This follows the broader trend we've seen where every major tech firm uses AI as the justification for shedding headcount, a convenient narrative that lets them frame mass layoffs as visionary pivots rather than cost-cutting. Meta's particular genius is in scheduling the misery: not one brutal purge, but a phased, multi-act drama of redundancy stretching across the year. It's almost impressive how they've managed to industrialise uncertainty, turning job security into a quarterly forecast. The real product innovation here isn't in AI models—it's in the art of managed decline.