Meta to cut 8,000 jobs on May 20: See which jobs at risk

Meta Platforms, Inc. plans to lay off around 8,000 employees.

This accounts 10% of the workforce of American multinational technology, with additional cuts expected later in 2026.

The move comes as the company doubled its 2025 capital expenditure on redirecting $115-135 billion towards AI infrastructure.

The most vulnerable job positions are across:

• Reality Labs
• Facebook’s social division
• Recruiting
• Sales
• Global Operations

The roles such as general staff, engineers, developers, VR game studio developers, designers, recruiters, sales operation staff, and global operations personnel. 

FAIR (fundamental AI research) researchers and engineers were not transferred to Applied AI engineering, corporate support roles across all divisions, and employees rated in the 7-10% under the new performance system.

The California WARN Act filings show that there are 124 jobs at Meta’s Burlingame offices starting May 22 and 74 at the Sunnyvale site on May 29.

This May round comes as a change from the specific layoffs to a full-fledged reorganization of the company. From the time Mark Zuckerberg became CEO in 2022, he has cut more than 25,000 jobs. 

Prior layoffs were done as corrections due to excessive hiring during the pandemic, while this one is specifically about reorganization for AI.

All decisions will be made under the supervision of Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old Scale AI CEO whom Meta hired in June 2025.

Among these roles, the traditional roles will be revamped with titles such as “AI builder” and “AI podlead.”