Leah Weiger: Let’s invest.
Zoe Schiffer: They have that going on for a while.
Leah Weiger: Google wasn’t perfect, but it was –
Zoe Schiffer: Somewhat there.
Leah Weiger:- He had this feeling. For me, an outsider in every way, I know about these layoffs because they were, a) very chaotic, but b) in some ways, unnecessarily so. Not that other tech companies don’t fire dozens of workers all the time. This sounds like something we discuss on this podcast frequently, but it happens with such a large runway and in a way that makes employees feel bad about themselves.
Brian Barrett: Well, because it’s not just about layoffs, right? It’s also, even if you stay there, if you don’t get culled from the herd, you’re going to have to deal with this world where you have spyware on your laptops to train AI to probably take over your job at some point, right?
Zoe Schiffer: Explain that a little.
Brian Barrett: Meta announced, and this was more publicly, that they would put software on employees’ laptops that would monitor their keystrokes and how they move cursors and basically how they do their work as meta engineers and use that as training data for their internal models to try to improve their AI models because they’ve run out of other resources.
Zoe Schiffer:And can you opt out of that, Brian?
Brian Barrett: This is a great question. I’m so glad you asked. You cannot unsubscribe.
Zoe Schiffer:I feel like you don’t know the answer to this question.
Brian Barrett: In fact, when an employee asked in a very public forum within Meta, “Hey, can we just not do this?” Zoe, was the response?
Zoe Schiffer: Oh, you sure would, and shame on you for asking. And some resident staff, in fact thousands of resident staff, are being recruited into the AI ranks. We published an article today that was about morale within the company, but also how there’s been this mad rush to use the perks and salaries that employees get. But one of the things that was said at the end is that the remaining employees are being asked to join the AI teams. So whatever your previous job was, they recruit internally. You’ve been recruited into the ranks of AI, and now your job will look completely different.
Brian Barrett: That’s like 7,000 people.
Zoe Schiffer: Yes.
Leah Weiger: I’ve actually heard people use the word kidnapped.
Zoe Schiffer: Oh, my God.
Leah Weiger:Isn’t that-
Zoe Schiffer: I wish we had that in the story.
Leah Weiger: I’m so sorry, but Tarab is in other bands. Suddenly they just disappeared one day. After this layoff, did Zuckerberg and his colleagues propose some sort of coherent leadership plan or proposal? What happens after this?
