Meta lays off nearly 1,400 Washington employees in latest tech workforce cut: Check worst-hit departments, severance package and more

Which departments are worst-hit?

Software engineers, data scientists, content designers and IT staff, and other broad range of positions are likely to be affected in the latest layoffs by Meta, highlighting how the company’s restructuring effort is reaching into its technical workforce.

“The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures and moving thousands of employees to business critical priorities across the company,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement shared with FOX Business.



The filings offer one of the strongest indications so far of how Meta’s sweeping workforce restructuring is impacting employees, following the company’s recent announcement to cut nearly 10% of its staff while reallocating thousands of roles toward AI-related projects.

The company informed employees on May 20 that they were being laid off, but they will officially remain employees until July 22. Their severance packages include 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks for every year of continuous service.

Meta’s layoffs

Last month, employees learned that 8,000 workers, or 10% of Meta’s labor force, would be laid off as the company seeks to be a leader on the forefront of artificial intelligence. The company also shifted thousands of its existing staff into AI-focused roles. The social media giant started laying off across its global offices by reportedly sending early morning 4 am emails local time on May 20,

Reportedly, Singapore staff were the first to receive the notification. Similarly, employees in Europe and the US also received such mail as per their respective time zones.

Following this, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly sent a memo to Meta employees, clarifying that the rest of the workforce was not at risk of being laid off this year. According to a Reuters report, he wrote, “I want to be clear that we do not expect other company-wide layoffs this year.” The company employed nearly 78,000 workers globally at the end of March, according to securities filings.

Meta’s heavy investment in AI

Meta has become one of the biggest companies investing in artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley. The company is spending billions of dollars on data centres, powerful AI chips and new AI tools as competition grows with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a major part of Meta’s future plans and simultaneously, the company is cutting jobs and reorganising teams to focus more on automation and AI development.

During an earnings call in April, Meta said it expects to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI investments this year. That estimate is around $10 billion higher than what the company had earlier projected for 2026.

Since October, when Meta carried out major layoffs across the company, nearly 2,000 employees in the Seattle area have lost their jobs, including the latest round of layoffs announced last week. The cuts add to the thousands of workers already laid off by other tech companies.