Meta is expected to lay off roughly 8,000 employees on May 20. Under the pressure of a radical AI pivot, the company has spawned a surreal set of survival defense mechanisms.
Despite executives promising that the cuts won't be based on AI proficiency, Meta still launched an internal leaderboard that publicly displays token consumption and interaction time with its AI models. Fearing implicit rank-and-yank, some employees are now sending meaningless questions to internal bots just to pad their engagement stats.
The paranoia has seeped into every corner of daily work. With keystroke-logging software recently introduced, workers are manually disabling the default AI note-taking feature during video calls so they can safely discuss layoff rumors. On internal forums, a post suggesting that the company offer employees who can be replaced by AI a five-year salary buyout has drawn widespread共鸣.
But more than the fear of unemployment, there's a deeper sense of alienation. As one employee put it: even if you haven't lost your job yet, you've already been commodified.