【文章标题】：The Pulse: Meta wanted to reduce teams by 60% because of AI
【文章标题】：《脉动》：因AI技术，Meta曾计划裁员60%
【文章正文】：
Hi, this is Gergely with a bonus, free issue of the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. In every issue, I cover Big Tech and startups through the lens of senior engineers and engineering leaders. Today, we cover one out of four topics from
大家好，我是Gergely，为您带来本期《务实工程师通讯》的免费特刊。每期内容我都通过资深工程师和技术管理者的视角，解读科技巨头与初创企业的动态。今天我们将探讨上周《脉动》中四个话题之一。
last week’s The Pulse
上周的《脉动》
issue. Full subscribers received the article below seven days ago. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can
完整订阅用户已于七天前收到下文。若您是通过邮件转发看到本文，
subscribe here
可在此订阅
Two months ago, I asked
两个月前，我曾提出疑问
why Meta appeared intent on destroying its engineering organization
为何Meta看似要瓦解其工程团队
, at a time when the social media giant was reporting record revenue and profits. The question was raised after the company did two unexpected things:
当时这家社交媒体巨头正创下营收与利润新高。质疑源于该公司两项出人意料的举措：
Laid off 10% of staff.
裁员10%
Executed large layoffs in May, with circa 10% of engineers shown the door.
五月实施大规模裁员，约10%工程师离职
Moved 20-30% of engineers to AI training.
将20-30%工程师调岗至AI训练
At around the same time, infra and product teams lost a further 20-30% of their engineers, who were reassigned to data labeling work for AI training.
同期基建与产品团队再流失20-30%工程师，他们被转岗从事AI训练的数据标注工作
The outcome of that period was low morale and a string of embarrassing outages, including
这导致士气低落及连串严重故障，包括
a “zero auth password reset” outage on Instagram
Instagram”零验证密码重置”漏洞
, where anyone’s account – including that of former US president Barack Obama – could be taken over just by asking the AI bot to replace Obama’s email with a different one.
任何人（包括美国前总统奥巴马）的账户，只需让AI机器人替换邮箱即可被接管
Now, thanks to reporting by Reuters,
如今根据路透社报道
new details
新细节
have emerged about a plan for much larger layoffs, which eventually did not go ahead. The news report is pretty damning, and I want to get into what the planned AI job cuts reveal about Meta at this point in its history, what Zuckerberg might have been thinking, and what it could mean for other tech companies.
一项更激进的裁员计划浮出水面（最终未实施）。这篇报道极具批判性，我将剖析：此次AI裁员计划如何折射Meta的历史转折、扎克伯格的考量，及其对科技行业的警示
Making Meta “AI-native:” Project Organization Transformation
打造”AI原生”Meta：组织转型计划
The plan was formed in January of this year. As
该计划成型于今年一月。据
per Reuters:
路透社报道：
“In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants gathered for their annual leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound. There they hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence.
”一月，Meta CEO扎克伯格与高管团队在夏威夷私宅举行年度领导力闭门会，酝酿了用AI重构这家社交媒体巨头工作的激进计划
Code-named Project OT – short for Organization Transformation – the plan envisioned an “AI native” future for the owner of Facebook and Instagram. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, “talent-dense” cadres of human staffers, according to one internal planning document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the project.”
代号”OT计划”（组织转型）的方案为FB和INS描绘了”AI原生”未来：AI将接管数千员工的日常工作，虚拟劳动力由精简化、“人才密集”的人类团队监管——路透社查阅的内部文件及三位知情人士透露”
The idea was that many existing teams could be reduced by 60% in their size through layoffs and reallocation of workers to other parts of the business. Underpinning this was the assumption that AI would enable these smaller teams to operate as well as before. HR at the social media giant projected that the project would involve a bigger layoff than happened in 2022-2023, when 25% of staff were let go. The new plan was to do one layoff+restructuring in May, and another in November.
核心思路是通过裁员和内部调岗将现有团队规模缩减60%，其底层逻辑是AI能让精简后的团队保持原有效能。Meta人力资源部门预估此次裁员将超越2022-23年25%的规模，新方案拟在五月和十一月分两波进行”裁员+重组”
I suspect a 30-40% company-wide layoff was planned.
我推测原计划涉及30-40%的全公司裁员
But at the last minute, something changed. From
但最后一刻出现变数。据
Reuters
路透社
(emphasis mine):
（加粗部分为笔者强调）：
“But on the night of May 19, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked. Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters.
”5月19日深夜（首轮裁员前几小时），扎克伯格突然退缩。根据路透社查阅的内部文件，次日Meta仅裁员10%，并取消了十一月裁员计划
By then, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company’s AI transformation initiatives were partly aimed at replacing them
彼时Meta员工已公开抗议，认定公司AI转型的本质是替代人力
.”
The Reuters report shows those employees were right: Meta’s AI initiatives were indeed aimed at laying off as many of them as possible, without changing overall productivity!
路透报道证实员工判断正确：Meta的AI计划就是在不影响整体产能的前提下最大化裁员
Even though these 60% cuts did not happen, some teams had 30-40% cuts and struggled to cope with their workloads. It also didn’t help that I talked with teams whose key engineers got reassigned to AI labeling: those were devs with critical domain knowledge that was lost after they left.
尽管60%裁员未实施，但部分团队30-40%的缩编已使其不堪重负。更糟的是，被调岗至AI标注的核心工程师往往掌握关键领域知识——这些知识随他们的离开而流失
Why did Meta want 60% smaller teams?
Meta为何需要精简60%的团队？
You must assume that a company like Meta acts rationally overall, and on that basis it’s worth figuring out what the rationale might be in the case of ‘Project OT’. The article offers a hint: executives at the company had been captivated by “AI-native” businesses in Asia,
我们需假设Meta整体决策是理性的，由此探究”OT计划”的底层逻辑。文章给出线索：高管层痴迷于亚洲”AI原生”企业
Reuters
路透社
claimed:
指出：
“Meta executives, including Chief Data Officer Alex Schultz and Head of Product Naomi Gleit, visited Asia last year and admired how startups there had built their organizational charts around AI, according to three people familiar with the trips. Meta executives also commissioned their own research into how AI startups were organized and set up pilot projects to determine what being “AI native” would mean at the company, according to one source familiar with the research and internal documents describing the pilots.”
”包括首席数据官Alex Schultz和产品主管Naomi Gleit在内的Meta高管去年考察亚洲，惊叹当地初创企业围绕AI构建的组织架构（三位知情人士透露）。据熟悉内情者及内部文件显示，Meta还专项研究AI初创企业组织模式，并设立试点项目探索’AI原生’的落地路径”
And indeed, in February Meta experimented with “AI-native pods” as
实际上，Meta二月份就试点了”AI原生小组”
reported in The Pulse
《脉动》曾报道
at the time. The presentation obtained by Reuters shows leadership intended to ac
当时。路透社获取的演示文件显示管理层试图…（原文截断）