Do a search for "Meta" in HN and their 2022 layoffs of 11000 people is one of the most-voted posts with over two thousand upvotes. Now in 2026 it barely registers as news.

>Meta's planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism that it provided misleading results on the benchmarks it used for early versions. It abandoned the release of the largest version of that model, called Behemoth, which had been due out in the summer.

>The superintelligence team has been working to reassert the company's standing this year by building a new model called Avocado, but the performance of that model has also lagged expectations.

20% headcount reductions in return for a 600bn capex outlay to train that next gen base model

A company in incredible turmoil. Would not want to be there now. Morale must be brutal.

This... can't be a signal of strength. There's a fine line between being agile and being erratic.

AI investment makes total sense as a proximal explanation. Minimize debt by trimming OpEx, then reinvest in compute. Seems smart.

And yet - this is what, the third layoff in 5 years? And weren't they doing aggressive performance cuts too? Are they workforce planning in 12 week sprints or something?

This reminds me of an overspending sports team: just toss together overpriced players/coaches, underperform, fire them all, do it again.

This will get them back to pre-covid levels.

Meta is close to achieving "AGI" internally (layoffs).