Meta told employees to work from home, then began firing thousands: Inside company's shocking 8,000-job purge
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This illustration photograph shows the logo of the US multinational technology Meta company displayed on a smartphone in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2026. Photograph: (AFP)
Meta’s latest wave of layoffs reportedly began with an unusually quiet instruction: stay home. Employees across offices in Singapore, the US and the UK were told to work remotely for the day, only for termination emails to begin arriving hours later, some as early as 4 am.
What started as a simple Work from Home (WFH) instruction at Meta has snowballed into the beginning of a massive layoff operation, with around 8,000 employees expected to be shown the exit door.
What happened?
It started with something that, in today’s tech world, barely raises eyebrows anymore. "Work from home today," read the instruction. Reports suggest there was no dramatic announcement. No all-hands meeting. No tense gathering inside glass-walled conference rooms. Employees across Meta offices in regions including Singapore, the US and the UK were simply told not to come in. Then, hours later, the real emails began landing in inboxes.
Meta has begun layoffs, cutting roughly 8,000 jobs, close to 10 per cent of its workforce, while simultaneously reshuffling thousands of remaining employees into AI-focused divisions as Mark Zuckerberg pushes the company deeper into what insiders are increasingly calling an AI-first reset.
Meta fires staff early morning
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According to reports, some affected staff in Singapore received termination emails around 4 am local time, reported Bloomberg. The sequencing did not go unnoticed: WFH first, layoffs next.
Inside Meta, many employees reportedly viewed the remote-work directive as a deliberate way to avoid visible scenes at offices, no emotional exits, no angry floor discussions.
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Reports suggest that AI is not just changing products, it's now changing who stays employed. Meta says the restructuring is part of a broader effort to streamline operations and redirect resources toward artificial intelligence.
In an internal memo, Chief People Officer Janelle Gale said that about 7,000 employees are being moved into new AI-native teams. In addition, nearly 6,000 open roles are simply being eliminated altogether.
The company is also flattening management structures and shrinking team sizes. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership," Gale reportedly said in an internal memo.
Meta now plans to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this year, much of it tied to AI infrastructure and data centres.
