Recruitment teams hit by Meta's restructuring
Meta is laying off hundreds of employees, including people in its recruitment team, under a new restructuring plan at the tech giant, according to reports.
The job cuts will also affect its social media and sales team teams, as well as Reality Labs, Meta's division that produces virtual reality and augmented reality hardware and software.
The cuts were first reported by The Information and were confirmed to news outlets on Wednesday.
"Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they're in the best position to achieve their goals," a spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
"Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted."
According to the reports, some employees affected by the cuts will be offered new roles within the company, some of which will require relocation.
Beta Hibbs, a leadership technical recruiter at Meta, shared on LinkedIn that she was impacted by the cuts.
"After 6 years at Meta, my role was impacted by the recent reduction in force today," Hibbs said on the platform.
"This one is especially tough. After returning as a short-term employee in 2024, I was grateful to receive a full-time offer again last year and I'm incredibly proud of what I was able to accomplish during that time. The gratitude I feel far outweighs the disappointment."
The layoffs come as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is investing in AI-native tools.
"I think 2026 is going to be the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work," Zuckerberg recently told employees.
"So to do this, we're investing in AI-native tooling so individuals at Meta can get more done, we're elevating individual contributors, and flattening teams. We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person."
Court case compounds challenges at Meta
A Los Angeles jury has found Meta (Instagram) and Google’s YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that the companies intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive for children and that this helped cause serious mental‑health harm to a young Californian woman who began using them as a child.
The jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay her US$3 million in compensatory damages, with additional punitive damages still to be decided, and the verdict is expected to influence hundreds of similar lawsuits and add pressure for tighter regulation of social media’s impact on young users.
