Meta scraps AI layoff plan after employee revolt

Meta's internal plans for 'Project OT' were far more aggressive than previously known, aiming to reduce team sizes by up to 60 percent and delegate work to AI agents supervised by a smaller human core. The plan's collapse was not a single event but a convergence of failures: the agent technology underperformed against expectations, the financial commitment drew investor criticism, and the workforce's reaction to surveillance for AI training turned from suspicion to open revolt.

This episode highlights a significant gap between the promise of AI-driven efficiency and its operational reality. The documented drop in internal sentiment from 74 to 55 percent underscores the human cost of such strategies. Zuckerberg's July admission that the technology 'hadn't sped up as fast as he had expected' suggests that even at the highest levels, the timeline for AI-driven transformation is uncertain. For a company that has publicly staked much of its future on AI, this reversal indicates a recalibration of both its technical expectations and its approach to workforce management.