Big Tech shifts to AI/ML specialists
- Meta said on April 23 it will cut about 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, and cancel 6,000 open roles as it shifts spending and staffing toward artificial intelligence. - Microsoft said the same day it would offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employees, with about 7% eligible, while its active postings highlight machine learning, applied science and full-stack AI deployment work. - The hiring signal now favors big data, artificial intelligence and machine-learning specialists, which the World Economic Forum lists among the fastest-growing roles through 2030. (weforum.org)
Meta and Microsoft are cutting broader headcount while keeping their hiring language centered on artificial intelligence roles. (cnbc.com) (careers.microsoft.com) Meta told employees on April 23 that it plans to lay off about 8,000 workers, or 10% of its workforce, starting May 20, and scrap plans to fill 6,000 open roles. (cnbc.com) The company tied the move to a deeper push into generative artificial intelligence after earlier cuts in Reality Labs, sales, operations and contractor-heavy moderation work. (cnbc.com) (about.fb.com) Microsoft confirmed on April 23 that it will offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employees, a first at that scale for the company, with about 7% of U.S. staff eligible. (cnbc.com) At the same time, Microsoft job listings emphasize model training, data curation, inference, evaluation, deployment and machine-learning product work for Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot and other AI systems. (jobs.careers.microsoft.com 1) (jobs.careers.microsoft.com 2) That is the practical shift behind the “specialist” talk: companies still need software engineers, but the open roles they advertise increasingly bundle coding with model training, data pipelines and production operations. (jobs.careers.microsoft.com 1) (jobs.careers.microsoft.com 2) The broader labor backdrop points the same way. The World Economic Forum said in January that big data specialists, fintech engineers, and artificial intelligence and machine-learning specialists are the three fastest-growing jobs in percentage terms through 2030. (weforum.org 1) (weforum.org 2) The same report said 86% of surveyed employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their business by 2030, and it named AI and big data among the fastest-growing skills. (weforum.org) For new graduates and mid-career engineers, that means résumés built around shipping models, curating data, running evaluations and operating systems after launch fit the jobs being posted more closely than generic software claims. That is an inference from the roles companies are advertising, not a formal hiring rule. (jobs.careers.microsoft.com) (jobs.careers.microsoft.com) The thread running through both companies is not that general software work disappeared. It is that the most visible growth areas now sit where code, data and model operations meet. (cnbc.com) (jobs.careers.microsoft.com)
