Dawn redundancies: stressed employees told to work from home while awaiting their fate
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia — Social media giant Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp) has again announced mass redundancies affecting around 10% of its workforce. Unlike the mass layoff announcement in 2022, this time there was no apology from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to reports, North American employees were asked to work from home (WFH) on Wednesday, 20 May, while awaiting news of their fate.
Redundancies across the company’s divisions will occur in three waves. Affected staff are expected to learn their fate by email at 04:00 local time in their region, according to internal documents seen by Reuters and cited by the NY Post on Tuesday, 19 May 2026.
Meta’s HR chief Janelle Gale said in the document that executives ‘will announce organisational changes’ alongside the redundancies. Around 7,000 employees are expected to transition to new roles at the parent company Facebook and Instagram.
‘As leaders undertake organisational changes, many are embedding AI’s original design principles into the new organisational structure,’ Gale said, quoted by Reuters. ‘Many organisations can operate with a flatter structure, with small teams consisting of pods or cohorts that can move faster and with greater ownership,’ she added, citing the NY Post.
Meta is trimming managerial roles as part of the reorganisation as it becomes more reliant on AI to complete work.
Ahead of the redundancies, a employee told the San Francisco Standard that their office was in ‘chaos’ as staff feared they would be dismissed. ‘I am not satisfied with leadership and I am angry,’ said the unnamed employee. ‘This is the job that makes me most anxious and stressed,’ they added.
Earlier this year, Meta had nearly 79,000 employees. The redundancies affecting 10% of the workforce would mean cutting almost 8,000 staff.
Previously, the company said those made redundant would receive severance packages including at least 16 weeks’ base pay, plus a further two weeks for each additional year of service. They would also receive health-care benefits and career support.
In a memo last month, Gale said the redundancies were part of an effort to ‘run the company more efficiently’ as the company spends heavily on AI development.
Meta said its capital expenditure would reach US$145 billion this year alone, driven in part by the construction of new AI data centres and higher memory prices.
Meta did not immediately respond to media requests for comment.
The company is expected to implement more redundancies in the second half of the year, though the timing and exact scope have not been decided.
Zuckerberg has been endeavouring to ‘flatten’ Meta’s management ranks in recent years. He cut more than 20,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023 as part of the company’s ‘year of efficiency’ drive.
The layoffs come amid a wave of technology industry job cuts that has intensified as AI’s popularity grows. Many blame AI for job losses.
In the first three months of 2026, tech sector redundancies affected 52,050 people, a 40% rise on the same period last year, according to executive training firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
In March 2026, AI led the list of reasons cited by companies for layoffs in the technology sector, contributing 15,341 of the total, or 25%. A month earlier, the figure was 10%.