Meta Layoffs, Mark Zuckerberg Job Cuts AI

Will I still have a job next month?

For a data science professional in the Bay Area, that question occupied every quiet moment of April and the first half of May – the feeding hours, the sleepless nights, the small windows when a new mother might otherwise simply breathe.

She would. But her entire team of nine would not.

In April, Meta employees were told that 8,000 or 10 per cent of the workforce would be laid off in May as the company readied itself for the era of artificial intelligence. Thousands more would be reassigned to AI initiatives.

Advertisement – Scroll to continue

The weeks of waiting were their own kind of ordeal for Meera (name changed): “I felt anxious throughout the entire period because being laid off would have meant spending the remainder of my baby bonding time searching for a new job or having to return to India, instead of focusing on my baby’s healthy growth and my own recovery”.

“Uprooting our lives at that stage would have been incredibly difficult and caused immense anxiety,” she said.

On May 20, the bad news travelled to the ones not so lucky via emails, arriving at the crack of dawn. It reached employees in Singapore first, at 4 am local time, then rolled westward – UK, then US, landing in inboxes early morning across time zones.

Meta cut 8,000 or 10 per cent of its workforce in May.

The layoff spared Meera’s mailbox. It saved her from the 60-day visa clock that became a waking nightmare for many H-1B visa holders caught in the cuts.

Her survival came with its own cost. Her team was gone, and with them, her managerial role. She has since been moved to an individual contributor position, a change consistent with reports that Meta has been moving toward a flatter organisational model, one where fewer managers oversee larger technical teams.

Opinion | Panic In Silicon Valley: Why 15,000 Indians Fled US Last Year – With More On Their Way

She returns to work in two to three months, to…

Source