The vibe at Meta is corpse-like. Profits are sky-high, but morale? Floor level.
They cut 1,000 jobs last year, roughly 25,0,000 total since the “Year of Efficiency” started. This round? Another 8,000 people, fired because Zuckerberg claims he needs the cash flow to pour into data centers for AI. Again. The news leaked weeks before the announcement, leaving employees wondering if they were safe for months. That creates chaos. Or, as one employee put it, being “raptured.”
It isn’t just the firing.
Even the survivors face spyware on their laptops. Meta installed software that tracks keystrokes and cursor movement. No opting out. Why? To train internal AI models. Because apparently, we are out of other training data so they harvest human labor to feed the machine. Then, 7,000 remaining workers got “drafted” into AI teams. Whether they like it. Whether they have the skills. Gone are their old roles. Replaced by tasks in a vision employees describe as uninspired “slop.”
Is it any wonder they feel terrible?
The main competitor to Instagram is TikTok, which is not an AI company. We are making record profits on what we do, not on this new thing you’re forcing on us.
That is the disconnect. Zuckerberg sees a shiny new toy. Employees see mission drift. The metaverse bet was $80 billion. A huge gamble. AI is different, yes. But it’s not making money yet. And 10 percent of ad revenue? Comes from scams. Meta knows. They collect anyway.
Meanwhile, layoffs spread elsewhere. Microsoft, Cisco, Coinbase.
It is no longer just about correcting overhiring. The calculus changed. High-level engineers now oversee agents. Those agents do the work of junior staff. The entry-level rung disappears. Who gets promoted now? Who has the time?
Elon Musk tried to sue OpenAI for betraying its nonprofit roots. The jury took two hours to reject him. Two hours.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers cited the statute of limitations. It had expired. Too late. But deeper cuts came in her commentary. Musk’s credibility evaporated because he’s building his own massive AI competitor. Why trust his suit when he stands to profit from winning? He lost completely. Not just technically, but morally. The court saw the conflict of interest clearly.
Google tried to distract everyone at I/O.
Eric Schmidt got booed.
Yes. Actually booed.
Graduates heard him praise AI during his commencement speech. They threw noise. Not polite applause. Booing. A growing segment of young people loves the tool but hates the industry. They see the exploitation. They see the lies.
Do you even know who you are?
Search is changing again. Google’s new “agentic” search tries to answer everything before you click. It assumes it knows better. The user becomes optional. The interface vanishes.
There’s also this bizarre social ripple.
“Sad Wives of AI” groups formed on social media. Women of AI bros complaining about their spouses’ obsession with the tech. It sounds silly, until you realize it mirrors the broader cultural exhaustion. The hype has curdled. The mania is draining the joy from rooms everywhere.
Zoë, Brian, and Leah noted the irony of recording together in the same studio for the first time while discussing global digital collapse. Physical proximity remains rare for the podcast, yet the problems feel immediate. Tangible.
We listen to the leaks. We watch the profits soar. We watch the middle class of tech workers evaporate into training data.
The question isn’t who survives. It’s what survives after us.
Listen
- Podcasts app : Search Uncanny Valley.
- Overcast/Pocket Casts : Works well.
- Spotify : Available there too.
- Direct : Link in page audio player.
Contact
- Brian Barrett: @brbarrett (Bluesky)
- Zoë Schiffer: @zoeschiffer (Bluesky)
- Leah Feiger: @leahfeiger (Bluesky)
- Email: [email protected]
Key Articles Cited
- Meta’s New Reality : Profits high, morale low.
- Google I/O 2026 : Gemini, Search overhauled.
- Google Search : Goes agentic, removes user control.
- Sad Wives : A look at AI spillover in personal lives.
The transcript ends abruptly mid-thought about the statute of limits, much like the current narrative arc for AI startups. Nothing stays solid forever. Even court rulings are just snapshots before the next pivot. 🎧
