Meta just cut 700 jobs while simultaneously announcing executive bonuses and pay increases. If you want to understand who pays the price for the AI boom, this is it in one perfectly dystopian headline.
The layoffs hit across multiple divisions, but engineering teams working on existing products - the ones that actually generate revenue - took disproportionate hits. Meanwhile, the company is pouring billions into AI infrastructure, Reality Labs (still losing money), and whatever Mark Zuckerberg has decided is the next platform. The official line is "strategic realignment." The actual story is that Meta is gutting teams that maintain today's business to fund speculative bets on tomorrow's.
Here's the particularly galling part: the same week as the layoffs, Meta announced substantial executive compensation packages. We're not talking stock options that vest in five years. We're talking immediate bonuses for hitting growth targets while the people who built the actual products get severance packages.
This is the AI transformation playbook that every big tech company is running right now. Cut the humans, invest in the models, tell shareholders you're positioning for the future. The problem is that the future isn't here yet, and the products generating actual revenue today still need people to build and maintain them.
I talked to engineers at Meta (who wouldn't go on record for obvious reasons) and the mood is bleak. Teams that shipped major features last quarter are suddenly being dissolved. People who survived previous rounds of cuts are updating their LinkedIn profiles. The calculus is simple: if you're working on anything that isn't AI or AR/VR, you're expendable.
Meta isn't alone in this. Google, Amazon, Microsoft - they're all running similar plays. The tech industry spent 2023-2024 laying off tens of thousands of people while AI spending exploded. The companies call it efficiency. The workers call it getting sacrificed for the next hype cycle.
The technology is real. The potential is real. But so is the human cost. When you lay off people who built your actual business to fund speculative infrastructure, you're making a bet. Meta is betting that AI will generate enough value to justify dismantling teams that currently keep the company running. We'll see if they're right. The 700 people who just lost their jobs won't be around to find out.
