Intermittent layoffs are the norm at Meta, but it’s now carrying them out as its shift towards building AI — and using it to attempt to speed up its own workforce — becomes more overt than ever. On Wednesday, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company fired around 700 employees, according to reports from The New York Times and The Information. That number is only a sliver of its global workforce of around 78,000, but largely affected employees in its Reality Labs unit tasked with building a virtual reality “Metaverse,” which turned out to be a dismal failure: failing to attract users, let alone supplant our physical reality as Zuckerberg envisioned, it lost roughly $80 billion. In January, Meta fired 10 percent of the Reality Labs unit, or about 1,500 employees, and this month waffled on shutting the whole thing down. In these latest cuts, some of the other firings were in sales, recruiting, and Facebook, signaling that Zuckerberg is separating the chaff in non-AI related units beyond its flailing Metaverse division. Meta characterized the latest firings as routine belt-tightening. “Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals,” a Meta spokesman said…
