Record Revenue, Rising Profits – and Mass Layoffs
Across the software industry, a new pattern is taking shape: tech layoffs during peak financial health. Intuit cut 3,000 employees, around 17 percent of its 18,200-person workforce, despite strong revenue growth and solid profitability. Meta is notifying around 8,000 staff that their jobs are disappearing as it embarks on one of the most aggressive restructurings in Silicon Valley. Cloudflare’s CEO laid off more than 20 percent of staff, or 1,100 people, even as the company posted record revenue growth and strong free cash flow. Meanwhile Workday reported higher revenue, rising net profit and improved margins, yet is explicitly aiming to keep headcount flat while it grows. These software company job cuts are not responses to crisis. Instead, they are framed as tech layoffs for AI transformation and margin expansion strategy, revealing a widening disconnect between financial performance and employment security.
Intuit’s ‘Faster, Leaner’ Play: Restructuring Without Saying ‘AI’
Intuit’s move is a textbook example of AI workforce reduction that is rarely labelled as such. Officially, CEO Sasan Goodarzi told investors the 3,000 job cuts were “not about AI,” but about becoming “faster, leaner, and more focused” by stripping out management layers and “coordination-heavy” roles like project managers and business operations. He argued that too many layers of management were blocking information flow and slowing product teams, and that decision making needed to be pushed to frontline “builders.” At the same time, Intuit is integrating external AI capabilities from partners like ChatGPT and Claude into TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp, while promising to rehire in AI-aligned positions. The company is also leaning into stock repurchases and explicitly told investors that a “big chunk” of the restructuring would go toward margin expansion and earnings-per-share growth, underscoring how efficiency and shareholder returns now outrank headcount growth.
Meta and Workday: Funding AI Through Headcount Discipline
Meta and Workday illustrate two sides of the same AI-first coin. Meta is cutting roughly 10 percent of its global workforce, with engineers and product teams heavily affected, to bankroll capital expenditure of up to USD 145 billion (approx. RM667.8 billion) on data centres, chips and AI talent. Mark Zuckerberg is reorganising around “personal superintelligence,” pushing a flatter structure of small pods that can move faster, and redeploying thousands of staff to AI product teams before layoffs even land. Workday, by contrast, is not announcing fresh mass cuts but making clear that growth will no longer mean aggressive hiring. After revenue of USD 2.54 billion (approx. RM11.7 billion) and net profit of USD 222 million (approx. RM1.02 billion) in its latest quarter, CEO Aneel Bhusri said he wants headcount “as close to flat” as possible while AI agents and internal tools drive productivity and margin expansion instead of new recruits.
Who Gets Cut: AI Comes for the ‘Measurers’
The job losses are not evenly distributed across functions. Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, offers a framework that clarifies where AI is biting first. Drawing on Peter Drucker, he divides work into builders (who create products), sellers (who sell them), and measurers (everyone who counts, coordinates or oversees). Builders and sellers, he argues, benefit from AI as a force multiplier: a 10x engineer or a better-equipped salesperson becomes more valuable, not redundant. Measurers are different. Their work in audit, finance, legal, compliance, operations, marketing and middle management is increasingly automatable by AI systems that can track, reconcile and report with unprecedented precision. In Cloudflare’s restructuring, “the vast majority” of layoffs hit measurers: layers of middle management, operations staff, marketing teams and parts of finance. This mirrors Intuit’s focus on “coordination-heavy” roles and hints at a broader AI workforce reduction targeting analytical and managerial functions over core product or sales roles.
From Growth Hiring to Perpetual Restructuring
Taken together, these moves signal a structural shift in how mature software companies think about people, productivity and profit. In the cloud and SaaS boom, revenue growth almost automatically translated into headcount growth. Now, leaders talk less about expansion and more about margin expansion strategy. Intuit is firing thousands while promising to rehire in AI-centric roles. Meta is sacrificing current headcount to bankroll an enormous AI build-out. Workday openly wants AI to “punch in” so it can keep its workforce flat even as revenue climbs. Cloudflare is rebalancing away from measurers toward builders and sellers, using AI to compress management structures. The new equilibrium is one where software company job cuts are no longer a sign of distress but a recurring tactic: reorganise, automate, and trim to stay “lean” for the next AI wave, even when the balance sheet looks stronger than ever.
