#restructuring · How AI Is Reshaping Work

Meta's May layoff of 10% was the first half of a two-wave plan code-named Project OT. Reuters published the documents on August 26. The second wave died the night before the first one landed, after Meta's own telemetry showed its AI agents were generating code without shipping product.

Bloomberg reported the cuts on August 21 and Apple confirmed them the same afternoon. Against a workforce in the hundreds of thousands, 200 is a rounding error. The shape is the story: this is not a cost reduction, it is a headcount transfer from one roadmap to another.

Newcomer obtained the Poolside investor letter on August 21. Nvidia pays $6B to license the Model Factory, invests another $1B at a $12B pre-money valuation, and extends offers to 109 employees. Legally this is not M&A. In career terms it is a complete transfer of a technical core.

Hays booked £905.5M in net fees, down 8% like-for-like. The split is where the information is: clients still want the work done, they just will not put the person on the payroll. The company answered by exiting 74 offices and selling six country businesses.

The South China Morning Post reported on August 18 that Nokia plans to close nearly all mainland China sites in stages by year end, keeping limited after-sales. This is not a company cutting R&D. It is a company moving R&D out of a country.

Dentsu will close 70 to 80 international legal entities this fiscal year and 50 to 80 more by FY2028, taking Global HQ costs down about 30% and routing part of the savings into AI and data technology. The plan names no layoff figure.

Globant reported $614.4M in Q2 on August 13, against $614.2M a year earlier, with 2,673 fewer employees. Same revenue, fewer people, and gross margin went the wrong way: 33.9% against 35.4%.

An internal document says Oracle wants some teams cut by double digits before September 1, weeks after the company disclosed it had already eliminated 21,000 jobs and named AI as a cause.

The follow-up to Intel's mid-July cuts: the Data Center and AI Group it's trimming just posted 59% growth and drove Intel's fastest quarter since 2011.

Patreon laid off 93 people — 20% of staff — while revenue climbed 28%, and its CEO went out of his way to say AI wasn't the reason.

Amazon cut jobs inside the very group building its general-intelligence models — the AI unit is not safe from the AI layoffs it helped normalize.

Monday.com told the SEC it's cutting a fifth of staff to rebuild around AI agents — and raised its operating margin outlook in the same filing.