Meta Asks Applied AI Staff to Volunteer for Manager Roles

Meta is asking individual contributors inside its Applied AI division whether they want to move back into manager jobs, according to Business Insider's reporting relayed by Fortune. The program is opt-in, and some of the people being asked previously held manager titles before the company flattened them into contributor roles.

The context: roughly 7,000 workers were reassigned into the newly created Applied AI (AAI) division earlier in 2026, after Meta cut about 10% of its workforce, roughly 8,000 people, in May and scrapped plans to fill 6,000 open positions. Meta ended Q2 2026 with 75,472 employees, down 3% from the prior quarter, on revenue of $60.8 billion (up 28% year-over-year) and expenses of $42 billion (up 55%).

The reversal cuts against a template Mark Zuckerberg has been running since 2023, when he declared his "year of efficiency" and, in an internal program called "flattening," asked many managers and directors to move into individual contributor positions or depart. On the AI push more broadly, Zuckerberg has said "AI investments are increasingly shaping every major part of Meta's business, from product development to long-term growth initiatives."

Wired reported earlier this year that some AAI reassignees were unhappy about the placement, and some were later given the option to pursue other roles inside Meta. The move sits alongside a run of Meta reorganization stories we have been tracking this month, from the departure of superintelligence researcher Andrew Tulloch to the Muse agent debut.

Neither Fortune nor Meta names a target number of managers to reinstate, and the reporting gives no indication the recall extends beyond AAI.