Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles

Summary

AI + ML Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles Staff protest overhaul and mouse tracking at 'Employee Data Extraction Factory' Meta's massive role reshuffle begins today, with thousands of staff being transferred to AI-focused teams and their managers reportedly laid off.The tech giant is reassigning 7,000 workers to AI projects, eliminating around 10 percent of its current workforce, and closing 6,000 open positions, according to Reuters, which saw copies of the internal memos.The workforce changes, the latest in a series of moves that started 2022, will affect roughly 20 percent of Meta's approximately 78,000 employees. Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer, penned the memos to affected staff. Some have already begun their new AI-related duties, while the rest will be told of their fates today, she reportedly said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI-native design principles ⁠into their new org structures," Gale's memo read. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." This flatter structure will involve, in part, managers being either laid off or moved into roles where they are producing work instead of overseeing teams.Previous memos sent to staff in April stated that top engineers – those who represented the company's "strong software engineering talent" – were being "selected" for brand-new divisions within the business.Among these were the Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator units, as well as Central Analytics.Once famed for letting its staff pick and choose their projects, Meta said those selected for this new AI mission had no say in the matter. Responding to an employee's question, Maher Saba, VP of AAI Engineering, wrote: "AAI is one of the company's highest priorities and we're resourcing it by moving our strongest talent to address it. Therefore, the trans...