Facebook's Meta to begin notifying staff of layoffs

Facebook parent company Meta will today begin notifying staff who will be affected by plans to cut 8,000 jobs globally, which is around 10% of its workforce.

It is not yet known what impact the layoffs will have on the company's Irish operation, which employs around 1,800 people.

The job cuts were first reported last month after management issued a memo to staff, which also stated that the company will not fill thousands of open jobs it had been hiring for.

Reuters has reported that today's cuts will be accompanied by a fresh round of organisational changes aimed at improving the company's artificial intelligence (AI) workflows.

In a memo to staff issued earlier this week, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees the company plans to move 7,000 workers to new initiatives related to AI workflows and to eliminate managerial roles.

The cuts come as Meta increases spending on AI.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously said that 2026 would be the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way the company works, with investments in AI tools that would involve "flattening teams".

"We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person," Mr Zuckerberg said in January.

In March, it emerged that 15 jobs were under threat at the company's Irish operation linked to the adoption of AI.

Irish-based Meta staff were also impacted by a redundancy announcement in January last year, when the company said it would cut around 5% of its "lowest performing" staff globally.

The company previously cut around 840 jobs in Ireland, with rounds of redundancies in November 2022 and again in May 2023.