Meta’s push to become a leaner, AI-native company began with a blunt premise: fewer layers of management would mean faster decisions, less bureaucracy and more money for computing power.

That logic drove the company’s 2023 “year of efficiency,” when managers and directors were pressed to become individual contributors or leave. It hardened this year as Meta built Applied AI, a new division meant to train models and move them into products. Roughly 7,000 employees were reassigned into the unit, including former managers recast as individual contributors.¹

In May, Meta cut about 10% of its workforce—roughly 8,000 jobs—and abandoned plans to fill another 6,000 openings. Managers were hit particularly hard, according to an analysis of public layoff notices, as Zuckerberg sought to “run the company more efficiently” while financing enormous AI investments.²

Now comes the corrective. Meta has begun asking some individual contributors in Applied AI whether they want to become managers again, four people familiar with the move told Business Insider. The arrangement is voluntary, and some of those approached previously held management roles before the reorganization.²

The shift is limited, not a wholesale repudiation of flatter teams. But it acknowledges a practical tension at the center of Silicon Valley’s AI race: automated tools may reduce some administrative work, yet deploying advanced systems across a company still demands people who can organize teams, set priorities and resolve friction.

That friction has already surfaced. Some workers complained they had been “drafted” into Applied AI, and Meta later allowed certain reassigned employees to seek other roles inside the company.² Meanwhile, the financial pressure behind the overhaul remains intense: Meta reported $60.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, while expenses rose 55% to $42 billion amid infrastructure spending and restructuring costs.¹

For Meta, the manager comeback is less a retreat from AI efficiency than an admission that speed needs someone at the wheel.