A Hawaii retreat, staff revolt, and weak AI: How Meta's 60% layoffs plan came apart
Meta reportedly planned to cut up to 60% of its workforce under a project code-named Project OT, aiming to transition to an AI-native organizational structure. The plan faced significant internal resistance and was ultimately scaled back to a 10% layoff in May 2023.
Why it matters
It highlights the aggressive corporate strategy of integrating AI to replace human labor and the subsequent internal cultural challenges faced by big tech firms.
Meta explored cutting some of its teams by as much as 60 per cent and handing their work to AI agents, according to a Reuters special report on the company's 2026 restructuring. The plan, code-named Project OT for Organization Transformation, imagined an AI-native Meta in which software did much of the daily work at the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent, with a small core of high performers left to supervise it. What Meta actually got was 8,000 layoffs in May, a workforce in revolt, and a second round of job cuts cancelled at the last minute.Project OT came out of Mark Zuckerberg's January leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound and was built to run in two waves, one in May and one in November. Only the first landed.
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