Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that success "isn't a given" as the company conducts thousands of layoffs and furthers its push on AI.
"AI is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes," Zuckerberg told employees, according to CNBC. He added that the company is transforming itself to "make sure it will always be the best place for talented people to have the greatest impact."
"People tell us that they appreciate the ability to take greater ownership and execute their vision with less bureaucracy and management to navigate," he added.
Meta has begun conducting the layoffs and has also scrapped plans to fill 6,000 roles. A recent report noted that more layoffs could take place in August and in the fall, but Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that executives "do not expect other companywide layoffs this year."
He did acknowledge that "we haven't been as clear as we aspire to be in our communication, and that's one area I want to make sure we improve."
The finance head of the company, Susan Li, said during the earnings call from the first quarter that leadership doesn't "really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future."
The company ended the first quarter of 2026 with 77,900 employees, down 1% on the final quarter of 2025, following earlier rounds of redundancies. Those previous cuts were pitched as a way to streamline operations after heavy spending on the metaverse. This time, executives are far more explicit that jobs are being traded for computing power.
Employees are also protesting against the company's decision to implement a technology tracking their mouse movement and keystrokes to train its AI model, according to a recent report.
Reuters detailed that employees are distributing flyers across U.S. offices encouraging colleagues to sign an online petition against the initiative. "Don't want to work at the Employee Data Extraction Factory?" the flyer says.
The petition in question claims that "when employees asked what privacy reviews were conducted, including any 'people data reviews' (which are required for processing employee data), no completed privacy reviews were provided."
"The outlined privacy mitigations were vague, and leadership's confidence in them appeared limited - evidenced by the selective opt-out afforded to executives," it adds.
The petition goes on to say that employees are speaking up "because it's expected of us and, more importantly, because it is the right thing to do." "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace," employees said.
