Leah Feiger: Let’s invest.
Zoë Schiffer: This has been going on for some time.
Leah Feiger: It wasn’t full Google, but…
Zoë Schiffer: A bit there.
Leah Feiger: – it had such an atmosphere. For me, an outsider in every sense, I know about these layoffs because they were A) very confused, but B) kind of unnecessary. That doesn’t mean other tech companies aren’t laying off dozens of workers all the time. We seem to discuss this a lot on this podcast, but it’s done with such a vast runway and in a way that makes employees feel terrible.
Brian Barrett: Well, because it’s not just about layoffs, right? It’s also the case that even if you stay there, if you don’t get picked out of the herd, you’re going to have to face this world where you have spyware on your laptops training the AI to probably take your job at some point, right?
Zoë Schiffer: Explain this a little.
Brian Barrett: Meta announced, more publicly, that it was going to put software on employees’ laptops that would monitor their keystrokes, how they moved their cursors, and basically how they do their jobs as Meta engineers, and utilize it as training data for their own internal models to try to improve their AI models as they run out of other sources.
Zoë Schiffer: Could you give it up, Brian?
Brian Barrett: That’s a great question. I’m so glad you asked. It was impossible to give up.
Zoë Schiffer:I thought you didn’t know the answer to that question.
Brian Barrett: In fact, when an employee asked on a very public forum at Meta, “Hey, could we do this?” Zoë, the answer was?
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, you definitely will, and you’ll be ashamed of yourself for asking. And some of the workers who stay, actually thousands of workers who stay, get drafted into the ranks of artificial intelligence. We published an article today that was kind of about morale in the company, but also about how there was a mad rush to take advantage of perks and stipends that employees were entitled to. However, at the end it was said that the remaining employees were asked to join the AI teams. So no matter what job you had before, they will be hired internally. You are called into the ranks of AI, now your work will look completely different.
Brian Barrett: That’s about 7,000 people.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
Leah Feiger: I’ve actually heard people utilize the word “delighted.”
Zoë Schiffer: Oh my God.
Leah Feiger: Isn’t that…
Zoë Schiffer: And I wish we had that in the story.
Leah Feiger: I’m very sorry, but I fell in love with other bands. Suddenly one day they just disappeared. Following this firing, have Zuckerberg and company offered anything resembling a coherent plan or leadership proposal? What will happen next?