Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had planned a major shake-up but failed to implement it amid an employee revolt, according to internal company documents, seen by Reuters, and interviews with insiders.
To make its workforceMeta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show. Staff revolted – and hours before a big layoff in May, the CEO called off planning for further cuts.
The plan was code-named Project OT – short for Organization Transformation. It envisioned an “AI native” future for the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
What’s Project OT?
In January, and his top lieutenants reportedly hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence.
According to the plan, as reported by Reuters, AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, “talent-dense” cadres of human staffers, according to one internal planning document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the project.
In scenario-planning exercises, sources said executives explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta by up to 60%.
Some employees would be offered roles in new units, while others would be laid off as part of a culling that one human-resources executive projected would be as big as or bigger than the company’s cuts of around 25% three years ago, according to another internal document.
The restructuring would be carried out in two “waves,” beginning with a first purge in May and followed by another shake-up in November, according to internal planning documents seen by Reuters.
Layoffs would be supplemented by closing open positions and pushing out people Meta believed were poor performers. These and other details of the plan, including the scale of the restructuring, haven’t been previously reported.
But on the night of 19 May, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked.
Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters.
Why did employees revolt?
According to Reuters, were in open revolt, convinced that the company’s AI transformation initiatives were partly intended to replace them.
Internal data also suggested that autonomous AI “agent” technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains.
Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan AI spending.
This report revealed, for the first time, the rapid pace of the cuts Meta was considering, the thinking behind the plans, and how they quickly unravelled.
Based on scores of internal documents, posts and recordings reviewed by Reuters, as well as conversations with more than 20 people with knowledge of Meta’s inner workings, the reporting shows how the social-media giant attempted to position itself at the forefront of an AI-driven workplace overhaul, only to stumble in the execution.
Did Meta confirm existence of Project OT?
Meta confirmed to Reuters the existence of Project OT, which it described as a year-long project focused on cost-cutting, redesigning team structures and shifting staff into new priority areas, such as producing training data for its AI models.
The company acknowledged the plan was to be carried out in two waves and that the most drastic scenarios involved reducing the size of some of Meta’s teams by up to 60%.
But it declined to specify which units were involved and said several major ones weren’t part of it.
Meta said the scenarios included both layoffs and redeployments and that the company never intended to lay off 60% of its workforce.
Company leaders cancelled plans for the second wave before determining how many people would lose their jobs overall, it said.
“As part of our company restructuring earlier this year, we asked some teams to conduct a scenario planning exercise looking at the potential impact of redeployments, open role closures and cuts,” Meta said in a statement.
“This ultimately resulted in moving thousands of employees to do priority work on several newly-established teams, as has been publicly reported. Ultimately, we didn’t move forward with every scenario from the exercise – and it was never assumed we would.”
What made Mark Zuckerberg blink?
Reuters was unable to determine exactly what prompted Zuckerberg to shift course or what the social-media giant’s current plans are to continue reshaping its workforce.
Meta declined to make available for comment.